Forgiveness has nothing to do with reconciliation or even holding a perpetrator harmless. Forgiveness is the process of giving up resentment or anger toward another person.

There is a Buddhist story about a monk who was robbed at gunpoint at a bus station. Immediately after that encounter, he felt great fear. Moments later, he felt great rage at the perpetrator. These emotions continued to wash over him, and by the time he got home he was crying. When the monk told his student this story, the student said, "After all you've been through, why are you crying?" The monk replied, "I realized that if I had been raised by that man's family and if I'd had his experiences, I would have been the man with the gun."

Daniel Gottlieb, Learning from the Heart