First of all, I'll make a distinction. We do not have to forgive the actions. We have to understand this, because it would be very difficult to forgive the action itself, because it's very unskillful. So we separate the person from the action. This is very important. This is what we normally have to do to get to Compassion, anyway, for people who do very unskillful actions. We don't want to believe that we are forgiving the action. We're forgiving that person for having so much ignorance and wrong view which is causing suffering for themselves and for others. This may help us get to Compassion, which helps us get to Forgiveness.
Now, if we do have resistance, perhaps we're still putting the actions and the person together. In that case, yes, going to the Equanimity reflection is very helpful. They are the owner of their own Kamma. In many ways that helps us see that actions, bad actions, do have results. If we can remember that we don't have to forgive the action, we can perhaps avoid having to make them responsible in our mind before we can get to Forgiveness. But having Equanimity when we're opening to difficult people is very difficult. Forgiveness for difficult people is challenging, so if we need to get to Equanimity and remind ourselves that it's not the actions that we're forgiving by reflecting on their Kamma, that's fine. That's a very skillful method and I compliment the person who asked this question for knowing how to do this. If we remember that we don't have to forgive the action, then it makes it much easier to forgive the person, especially with these types of people, because in order for people to do the unskillful things that they do, they have a lot of wrong view, a lot of ignorance.
Usually, if we think about that person coming into the world as an infant, a helpless infant, we can ask ourselves, "How did they come to those wrong views, when they came into the world as an infant just like ourselves? What conditioning did they go through? What Kamma did they have that led them to be born in that situation, which would mean they would have such conditioning that encourages such wrong views?" They're already suffering a lot, to be born into a situation where they will not have the opportunity to meet with skillful teachings. In fact, they have very unbeneficial Kamma. If we consider this, then it actually means that they have unbeneficial Kamma not only from this life, but also from past lives. They're just heaping more and more of this Kamma on top of themselves and, of course, causing suffering for lots of other living beings in the process.
So we try to remember to put them in the rest of humanity, and try to forgive humanity for their ignorance. For our ignorance. We try to remember how easy it is for us to get into wrong view; how easy it is for us to claim that things that are not mine are mine; how easy it is to want control over things; even how difficult it is to accept that people think differently to ourselves. We may then be able to come to Equanimity, Compassion, Forgiveness.