The Gita in daily life
When someone has wronged you
Someone has wronged me badly. Does the Gita say I have to forgive them?
Someone has wronged me badly. Does the Gita say I have to forgive them?
Kshama appears in the Gita as a quality of a person, never as an instruction about an incident. It is listed among the marks of one born to the higher nature (16.3) and among the work proper to a brahmin (18.42), and the devotee dear to Krishna is described as one who bears (12.13). The text does not tell you to say the wrong was small. It does not discuss apology or restitution, and it gives no rule about whether to keep the person in your life. It commends a temper. It does not settle a case.
Hansi Gita Bhawan Trust · from the Bhagavad Gita
The English word forgiveness carries a transaction: one person wronged, another pardoning, an account closed. Kshama in the Gita’s lists is closer to a capacity — the ability to bear, to hold steady, not to strike back. The Trust’s own English shows this. At 16.3 the word is rendered “patience”, at 18.42 “forbearance”, and at 12.13 the same root appears in the description of a devotee who meets pain and pleasure alike with patience. All three are defensible, and all three are narrower than the English “forgiveness”. No scene anywhere in the Gita shows one person forgiving another.
There is one scene of asking, and it runs in the direction nobody expects. In the eleventh chapter, having seen what he asked to see, Arjuna remembers how he has spoken to Krishna across the years of their friendship — the casual names, the jokes at rest and at meals, alone and in front of others — and asks his pardon (11.42). Then he asks to be borne with as a father bears with a son, a friend with a friend (11.44). It is a request, not a rule. What it shows is what the text takes this to be: not a verdict handed down, but a relationship that holds through the fault.
What the Gita does say about the state you are in meanwhile is more useful than it first appears. 5.23 praises the person who can withstand the force rising from desire and anger while still in the body. 16.2 puts akrodha, freedom from anger, among the higher qualities, and 16.3 adds adroha, freedom from ill will. That is the work being asked of the injured person: not about the wrong, which the text leaves standing exactly where it is, but about what carrying it does to the one who carries it. On what you owe a person who is still harming you, the Gita is silent.
In the Gita’s own words
Where this comes from.
Bhagavad Gita 5.23Shri Bhagavan
शक्नोतीहैव यः सोढुं प्राक्शरीरविमोक्षणात् ।
कामक्रोधोद्भवं वेगं स युक्तः स सुखी नरः ॥The man who can bear the force that rises from desire and anger here itself, before he is freed from the body, is a man of yoga, and he is happy.
The person who bears the force rising from desire and anger, here, in this body. This is the Gita’s practical instruction to someone carrying an injury, and it is about the force, not about the other person.
Bhagavad Gita 11.42Arjuna
यच्चावहासार्थमसत्कृतोऽसि
विहारशय्यासनभोजनेषु ।
एकोऽथवाप्यच्युत तत्समक्षं
तत्क्षामये त्वामहमप्रमेयम् ॥and however I slighted you to raise a laugh, at play, at rest, sitting or eating, alone or in front of others, Achyuta — for all of that I ask your pardon, immeasurable one.
Arjuna asking pardon for years of casual speech with a friend he had not understood. The Gita’s one scene of asking forgiveness, and he is the one asking.
Bhagavad Gita 12.13Shri Bhagavan
अद्वेष्टा सर्वभूतानां मैत्रः करुण एव च ।
निर्ममो निरहङ्कारः समदुःखसुखः क्षमी ॥He bears no ill will towards any living being, is friendly and kind to all, free of the sense of mine and of pride, the same in pain and pleasure, and forgiving.
The devotee dear to Krishna: no ill will towards any being, friendly, free of “mine” and of pride, and meeting pain and pleasure alike with patience. The Sanskrit word behind that patience is kshami.
Bhagavad Gita 16.2Shri Bhagavan
अहिंसा सत्यमक्रोधस्त्यागः शान्तिरपैशुनम् ।
दया भूतेष्वलोलुप्त्वं मार्दवं ह्रीरचापलम् ॥Not harming, truthfulness, freedom from anger, letting go, calm, refusing to speak against people, kindness to living beings, no craving for what one sees, gentleness, modesty, and no restlessness.
Akrodha — freedom from anger — listed among the qualities of the higher nature, beside truthfulness, gentleness and refusing to speak against people.
Bhagavad Gita 16.3Shri Bhagavan
तेजः क्षमा धृतिः शौचमद्रोहो नातिमानिता ।
भवन्ति सम्पदं दैवीमभिजातस्य भारत ॥Vigour, patience, firmness, cleanliness, freedom from ill will, and freedom from excessive pride — these belong to the man born to the divine nature, Bharata.
Kshama, here rendered “patience”, listed with vigour, firmness, cleanliness and freedom from ill will as belonging to one born to the divine nature. A description of character, not a procedure.
Bhagavad Gita 18.42Shri Bhagavan
शमो दमस्तपः शौचं क्षान्तिरार्जवमेव च ।
ज्ञानं विज्ञानमास्तिक्यं ब्रह्मकर्म स्वभावजम् ॥Calmness of mind, restraint of the senses, austerity, purity, forbearance, uprightness, knowledge, direct realisation and faith in what is beyond — these are the brahmin's work, born of his own nature.
Kshama again, rendered “forbearance”, among the work born of a brahmin’s own nature. Placed beside restraint, purity and knowledge rather than beside any rule about wrongs.
What to actually do
Small, and today.
- Keep the two questions apart. What was done to you is one question. What carrying it is doing to you is another. The Gita addresses the second (2.62–63, 5.23) and leaves the first to you, your family, and whoever else it properly concerns.
- Stop the rehearsal. Going over the wrong again is the first link of the chain at 2.62, and it is the link a person actually has some hold on. Not thinking about it at all is not available. Ending the third replay is.
- Do not demand the feeling of yourself on a schedule. 16.3 describes a quality of character, built slowly. A woman who still cannot speak to her brother-in-law but has stopped composing what she would say to him has moved, and the movement is what the text describes.
- Where the harm is still happening, act on the harm. Forbearance in 5.23 is about the force rising inside a person. It is not a reason to leave a child unprotected, a theft unreported or wages unclaimed, and the Gita says nothing that makes it one.
What the Gita does not say
That forgiving means calling the wrong small, or taking the person back. The Gita commends kshama as a quality of character and says nothing at all about the terms — no apology required, no restitution, no reconciliation, no rule about what contact to keep. Anyone who tells you that scripture obliges you to resume a relationship that harms you is supplying that obligation themselves. It is not in these verses.
The words behind this
Common questions
About this.
Does the Gita say we must forgive?
It lists kshama among the qualities of one born to the higher nature (16.3) and among a brahmin’s proper work (18.42), and describes the devotee dear to Krishna as one who bears (12.13). That is a commendation of a temper, not a command about a particular person, and the text attaches no conditions and no procedure to it.
What is the difference between kshama and forgetting?
The Gita does not ask for forgetting and never mentions it. In these lists kshama sits beside vigour, firmness and freedom from ill will (16.3) — a capacity to hold something without being ruled by it. Remembering a wrong clearly and not being governed by the memory are perfectly compatible.
Should I forgive someone who has not apologised?
The Gita gives no answer, because it does not discuss apology at all. Its one scene of pardon runs the other way: Arjuna asks Krishna to overlook years of casual speech and to bear with him as a father bears with a son (11.42, 11.44). Anyone who says the text requires or forbids this is adding to it.
Is anger at injustice wrong?
The text is hard on anger as a state that governs a person (2.62–63, 16.21), and it does not exempt anger that began in a real wrong. It also never says the wrong was not a wrong. Both stand together: the injustice is real, and being ruled by rage about it damages the one who is ruled.