(A student asked: “While practicing martial arts, I suddenly felt like crying halfway through. Should I keep focusing on the movements? In the past, I would ignore my emotions and continue doing the exercise.”)
When you feel like crying, why do you need to ask me whether you should continue practicing or go cry? If there is something you genuinely want to do, why do you need permission?
(Student: “Because at that moment, I thought I should hurry up and finish the assignment.”)
And then cry afterward?
(Student: “Yes. But later I no longer felt like crying.”)
There is no standard answer here. The important thing is that through this moment, you can see a pattern: often, you ignore your true feelings. You may even fail to value your genuine emotions. When your feelings come into conflict with family members or circumstances, you may habitually choose to suppress your own experience.
Do you think that creates problems?
(Student: “Yes.”)
It can. The problem tends to keep extending itself because this has become your habitual way of responding.
If you do not understand or adjust this mental pattern, what we call karma begins accumulating little by little from this very place. Over time, what builds up between two people may become resentment, anger, and bitterness—gathering layer upon layer.
You keep compressing yourself, storing up anger and grievances. Eventually, this may manifest as verbal attacks, harsh criticism, or a sharp, cutting tone in your speech.
(Student: “Yes. Becoming aggressive, saying hurtful things, or even making threats.”)
Exactly. It accumulates bit by bit. Once this pattern has solidified into part of your personality, it becomes very difficult to change. In relationships, anger, jealousy, and resentment continue to build.
This resentment can form a deeply tangled knot that is difficult to untie. The more challenging part is that you do not know how to resolve it, and at the same time, you continue creating more of it. Eventually, feeling helpless, you may begin searching for the meaning of life itself. In reality, this is often a projection of the problem or a way of shifting your attention away from it.
You may feel that you have already given so much, always considered others, and even sacrificed and suppressed yourself. Yet despite all that, you still cannot receive respect from others or even the basic experience of being seen and acknowledged.
In the end, this pattern can leave you feeling trapped, helpless, and unable to find meaning in life. At the same time, you may find nothing that truly offers comfort or support.
The root of the problem is that you do not understand the process we have just been discussing. This process is actually the beginning of karmic creation. The resentment and jealousy generated within a situation, if not expressed verbally, may eventually take the form of violence.
(Student: “Yes. One day I suddenly felt like hitting and kicking my husband. The thought just appeared, and the feeling came with it.”)
This is how suffering continues to accumulate.
The fact that you could feel this way toward your husband reveals that this pattern already exists within your consciousness. It is the very mechanism through which karma is created. The moment such thoughts arise, you have already entered into that suffering.
Even so, there is still a way through it.
The place to begin is with your intentions—the very first movement of the mind. You need to clearly see the reason you create karma, the thought that starts the process. Understanding that is the first step toward liberation.
Suzhen Liu
If you enjoy Suzhen Liu’s writings, please check out her latest book, “Discover Love Within—Release your Suffering,” available on Amazon
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