Accordingly, the result of positive actions is happiness and the result of negative actions is suffering. We therefore need to undertake the former and give up the latter, for the manner in which positive and negative actions ripen as their respective results is said to be inconceivable.

Whether positive or negative, even though an action may be insignificant at the moment it is performed, at the moment of its full maturation, its result will have greatly increased until it has become a hundred, a thousand, or even an infinite number of times greater, like a grain of barley or some other seed growing and spreading.

Unless the deeds we have accumulated are annulled by antidotes, it is impossible for them to be used up until their results have matured. So it is extremely important to take the adoption of virtue and avoidance of negative actions seriously. As the Great Master said,

What’s the use of winning happiness in this life through evil deeds

That will lead to misery in many lives to come?

This life is short, a mere few months or years,

And there’s no telling how long one’s future lives will last.

The way, therefore, to make your other lives happy and free of pain

Is to take up virtue and abandon negative deeds.

Dudjom Rinpoche – A Torch Lighting the Way to Freedom – Shambhala Publications