Human beings suffer. We suffer from physical pain, deprivation, and hardship, but I think we suffer mostly from spiritual pain. The pain of attachment to ideas, people, identities that all pass away, yet we cling to them with sadness or refuse to accept that they are impermanent.

But nothing is permanent, time is always moving through and around us, and we are in constant change. We are also entirely interconnected to all others, so we often suffer from the conflicts arising from the false sense of "self" and "other".

Accepting this interconnection, and accepting the impermanence of life, is a path to liberation. For those committed to meditation and compassion, it is also a start on the path to enlightenment.

None of this requires a God, but nor does it exclude the possibility of one. It's simply a way, a path of living, that encourages the individual to examine their own world, to embrace their own emotional reality, to live compassionately among others, and to release themselves from the suffering of attachment.

"How" and "Why" we even exist are distinct questions that can be addressed entirely separately from the spirituality of compassion and detachment. Or, more along my personal way, one can deem these questions irrelevant, and choose not to ask them.