How do different traditions teach forgiveness?

Forgiveness shows up as a named virtue across traditions that otherwise disagree about almost everything else, though each grounds it differently. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna lists kshama — forgiveness — among the twenty-six qualities of “divine nature” (daivi sampad) at the opening of chapter 16 (16.1–3), placing it alongside fearlessness, truthfulness, and freedom from anger as a marker of spiritual maturity rather than mere social courtesy. In the Gospels, forgiveness is framed as functionally limitless: when Peter asks Jesus whether forgiving someone seven times is enough, Jesus answers, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:21–22, also translated “seventy times seven”) — a number chosen precisely because it resists being counted, making the point that keeping score is itself the failure. Buddhism approaches the same territory from a different angle, less about a debt owed and more about a fire that needs to stop being fed: the Dhammapada states plainly, “Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world; it is appeased by love. This is an eternal law” (Dhammapada 1.5), treating forgiveness less as something granted to another person and more as the only mechanism that actually ends a cycle of harm. What unites the three is a shared diagnosis: retaliation, even when justified, perpetuates exactly the suffering it claims to resolve. Where they differ is the mechanism — the Gita frames forgiveness as evidence of a soul aligned with the divine, Christianity frames it as an obligation modeled on being forgiven, and Buddhism frames it as the only strategy consistent with how suffering actually propagates.