When a person is truly compassionate, then they are truly forgiving. Now, forgiving does not mean forgetting. You've heard that before, we don't have to forget what others have done, but we do forgive others in our hearts because we understand that they are ignorant. When we understand that everyone who is not enlightened is ignorant, that they are going to make some mistakes, and when we open our heart for this ignorance and for these mistakes, we're having compassion for them at the same time. So, really compassion and forgiveness are so closely related that they're inseparable, when they're working well together.
When you're truly compassionate to others that means you will be forgiving of them. In the same way, when you're open and compassionate with yourself, you will be more forgiving of yourself. This is because when you are open and compassionate, you realize, "Yeah, I was a product of my own conditioning. Who I was as a kid was affected by my cousin from Brooklyn, and my other friends, and my teachers, and everything else, and I did this negative thing because of that influence and that negative thing because of that influence and whatever." And when we are open with ourselves, we forgive ourselves, because we see we're just another conditioned person. And in that forgiving, compassion, and openness, they go very closely together, whether it's for ourselves or whether it's for others.