Katherine, a friend of mine, is a professional woman. She has always made a formidable impression on people with her remarkable capabilities and myriad talents, such as singing. No wonder she has been promoted to vice president of a multinational corporation at her young age. But no one is perfect, and Katherine has one shortcoming—she bursts into flame easily.

Katherine’s mother passed away several years ago. The task of caring for their ailing father before he passed in April of 2015 fell mostly to her younger sister, Jackie, since Katherine was too busy. In order to make up for her sister’s sacrifices and toil, Katherine often generously bought Jackie luxurious presents. Furthermore, she consistently provided her father and Jackie with munificent financial support.

I was invited to attend her father’s funeral and the following dinner reception on April 11, 2015. To everyone’s surprise, Katherine and Jackie suddenly burst into a squabble at the dinner table.

“It was such crass behavior…. You’re absolutely shameless!” Katherine shouted at her sister.

“You’re truly ungrateful! I can’t take you anymore!” Jackie retorted.

The two sisters continued berating each other contemptuously and maliciously right in front of all of the relatives and friends present. To our astonishment, their verbal strife soon degenerated into a physical clash. It turned out that Jackie had quietly transferred the ownership of their late father’s home in downtown Taipei to herself, as she felt she deserved to inherit that valuable property after tirelessly looking after him for so many years. Katherine strongly disagreed with Jackie, since she felt her sister should have at least shown some respect by seeking her consent first.

“I cannot believe my own sister could have done such a dishonorable thing behind my back. I’m going to sue you for illegally misappropriating Dad’s property,” Katherine threatened her sister angrily.

Witnessing this scene, I could tell that whatever spiritual merits Katherine had cultivated from all the goodwill she had shown to Jackie before were completely wiped away at that moment. A Buddhist adage popped into my mind: “A single flame of anger can burn down a whole forest of the spiritual merits that a person has cultivated.” Jackie’s behavior was disgraceful, but Katherine’s ruthless reprimands could only humiliate Jackie and prompt her to fly into a rage. No positive, rational dialogue or agreement could have been reached between the two of them in this situation.

The aforementioned saying is one that Master Cheng Yen often quotes in her lectures to her disciples. One of the Master’s aphorisms states, “Giving vent to anger is temporary insanity.” She also comments that anger is a karmic cause that downgrades a person’s future reincarnations to the “lower realms” of animal, hungry ghost, or hell. How then does one cultivate spiritual merits? The Buddha emphasized in the Diamond Sutra that we can only cultivate boundless merits by both engaging unselfishly in charitable activities and tolerating insults. If we only busy ourselves with charitable actions but do not practice tolerating insults to refrain from getting angry, we merely obtain good fortune.

Although good fortune enables us to lead a comfortable life in the world, only our merits can help us to elevate our spirituality to a sublime level of enlightenment. Obviously, if we cannot control our tempers when locking horns in disputes with others, and if we throw irrational tantrums, then all of the spiritual merits or goodwill that we may have cultivated for years will be gone within a second.

If Katherine had not lost control of her emotions and had instead treated Jackie with forgiveness after she found out what her sister had done, their relationship would not have turned sour right after their father’s funeral. Katherine might have been able to vent her anger on Jackie and started litigation against her, but the two sisters would have become strangers for the rest of their lives. Fortunately, Katherine told me that her flame of anger was extinguished a few days later and she decided not to sue Jackie. Hopefully, she will learn from this unpleasant episode the importance of curbing her short temper so that she can become an even more admirable person and create many merits for the future.

Curbing one's flame of anger with tolerance and forgiveness is an imperative for all of us.