Recognize that this life, this cosmos doesn’t need to achieve something else — presumably something special enough to be valued for its own sake — in order to be meaningful.
We think this way because we normally have only the tiniest sliver of a sense of how special this life, this cosmos actually is. As we foster our deep appreciation for how special it, in fact, is, we naturally begin to value it for its own sake. Questions of what else its purpose might be — what else it might achieve by existing — simply evaporate. And there’s a deep feeling of wellbeing in seeing this. That deep wellbeing is a feeling people crave at their center, and historically have turned to religion to feel.
This is part of what Jamie Wheal was talking about, and he thinks that getting people to truly embrace this is the role of peak, rapturous experiences.
Otherwise it’s an infinite regress, since you could then ask what that other thing is “for”. It’s just like Feynman’s example of having to allow for somethings — like magnetism — to exist without explanation in terms of anything else.
there can be something escapist about meditation with the goal of reaching enlightenment