I am not an expert in buddhism but I think the idea of doing good karma is to get out of this cycle of life and death and to get moksh

So I mean, If we really think about it from an atheist's point of view as to what happens after death, its essentially moksh.

Also I genuinely believe that if there is some spiritiuality in this world, then it would reward us for the work that we are doing by the amount of hard work.. ie, reading the 9 million mantras per minute was being that easy, and accruing karma was so easy, then even people who are more sinful than me can go to moksh because they can offset their karma by an insane degree by doing this thing and I feel like if the universe is from where we get our intelligence and we can deduce it that its kinda wrong, then ofc the universe knows that too and it won't be of much value.

Basically if I truly see things from a more religious perspective, even then theoretically one should just live a good life as much as he can and not wonder or worry about the rules set by other religious people since they themselves had crafted their own rules and you should too.

TLDR: Just be a good person as much you can without pushing yourself to limits and then to me personally, I will much rather go into hell by not following god but following good than go into heaven by following god but not good.

I mean no offense to religious people because i mean, I can understand you guys too. Life is truly scary. Even I want the comfort of a god or karma and even I pray sometimes when I truly feel desperate but the scientific part of me can't really let go of all the inconsistencies I feel like.

▲

thrance 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

AFAIK, from my atheist's understanding of Buddhism, you don't get out of the cycle of life and death, samsara, with good karma. Quite the contrary, you're almost guaranteeing your next life will be that of some kind of angel that lives for millions of years, and delaying your eventual enlightenment by that much, since you can only get enlightened on Earth.

Not that it's a bad thing, people are allowed to enjoy reincarnation, and it probably beats being reincarnated in hell.

▲

ourmandave 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

TLDR: Just be a good person as much you can...

Armchair philosopher: But you have to define good before you can follow it. Even the Golden Rule falls apart if you're a masochist.

	▲	Imustaskforhelp 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Have thought about this too. I genuinely don't have an answer except doing good is feeling good with a sense of contentment. And to be honest, for me its also doing good not because you want others to know but in spite of it, you should rather live your life in that sense of secrecy but honestly, that's what I consider "based" and its definitely nothing wrong with telling what good you did, but I really suffer from this sense of oversharing everything so to me its really one of an ideals. I get what you are saying and its a good point and I am sure that there is some better reasoning than this good than "what my soul feels truly satisfy with" Honestly, I might sound kind of idk preachy but I want to live my life in such a sense that it can have an impact. A positive impact. That's it. If people say my name in good intention. But also, I don't want to work only for people to say that I have good impact but rather knowing that the good that I am doing even in secret might come some day out. I do doubt how many secrets I can carry to grave in this interconnected world. I'd much rather be an open book with some dark chapters but I'd try to still do some good. I am sorry if I confuse you because I think I am a little confused too. Because I don't know how my definition of good can stand time and ever changing people. I can't convince anybody something, everyone have their own livelihood and they were parented differently and so they value different things and they have different meanings of good. Putting the word's meaning into umbrella means that I am taking the freedom away. There is no objective good in my opinion, only things happening. Chaos and reactions. We are lucky to spawn in into such an complicated world, but we were bound to happen because we are what happens when luck hands correctly. We were bound to exist in the randomness. It doesn't have much native meaning itself, this world. I feel like it just has some scientific rules and I don't know why it has that, but I doubt if there is some moral code embedded into the universe. Its our own intepretation. I guess I am going all over the places for sure, definitely not a clear thought but a rough sketch. I sometimes feel a little guilt thinking that I might be polluting hackernews with such long comments since they might take up visual space away from some meaningful content than myself. But maybe I overshare.
	▲	stronglikedan 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In my mind that's easy. Doing "good" is just doing things that don't intentionally hurt others, unless it's to defend oneself or save many others from harm.