How forgiveness can sometimes be difficult

A blog by Frits Koster

Over two and a half years ago, Joyce Cordus and I developed Mindfulness-Based Training in Forgiveness. During our most recent meeting, we realised that we both feel somewhat uncomfortable facilitating MBTF at this time, due to the actions of the Israeli regime in relation to forgiveness.

After all, I experience feelings of moral anger, rage and sadness when I read the news and see the horrific images of the Palestinian people being starved in Gaza and falling victim to a ruthless genocide led by the Israeli regime under Netanyahu.

“How can I forgive people who do such terrible things?”

I then remembered a passage that we want to include in our book with the provisional title ‘Mindfulness-Based Forgiveness: Theory, Practice and Application’ (Routledge, Autumn 2026), about how we often wrongly think that forgiveness is a goal we must achieve quickly and completely. We may set ourselves the goal of being completely at peace with ourselves or with another person within a few weeks or months. This is what we call a “vertical” practice: a way of practising in which we focus on an ideal of complete acceptance and see anything that falls short of that as failure. The higher the image we paint for ourselves, the more likely we are to become frustrated when we encounter pain, anger or disappointment along the way. But the process of forgiveness cannot be forced. It is not about setting the goal of a predetermined outcome, but rather about cultivating an attitude of openness and receptivity to whatever arises.

With this “horizontal” approach, we do not cling to an end result. Everything that arises during the practice can be part of the journey – including resistance, anger, powerlessness and other difficult feelings. So you can also cultivate a forgiving attitude to yourself for the difficulties you may encounter on the path to forgiveness. This prevents us from using forgiveness as a way of suppressing difficult emotions and helps us to continue practising with a more open, inclusive and inwardly connecting attitude.

In addition, It may be helpful to understand that forgiving doesn’t mean we should condone harmful behaviour. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has charged Netanyahu, former defence minister Gallant and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri (who is presumably no longer alive) with war crimes and crimes against humanity! We can firmly say “No!” to the genocidal violence. But we don’t need to poison ourselves with hatred. “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies”, as Nelson Mandela famously said. And that is already a very valuable and space-creating aspect of forgiveness.

Frits Koster, August 2025