THE TWO VIEWS

The first view is that life has no purpose.  Life has no purpose beyond, that is, perpetuating itself.  But this perpetuation is meaningless because it is perpetuation just for the sake of perpetuation.  What is left is death, and death is extinction, utter extinction. 

This is the view of Buddhism.  Whether this perspective is the truth of it, how things really are, is not Buddhism's point.  The point is that it may as well be the way things are, given what we know and are capable of knowing with our limited senses and intellect.  According to Buddhism, there is only one thing that we can truly know and are capable of knowing and that is ourselves and why we are not happy.

The second view is that of Vedanta.  Here, life has a purpose and that is the awakening of individual consciousness.  The universe perpetuating itself is not meaningless but instead is necessary for the evolution of this consciousness. 

There are those who argue that awakening is merely an idea, a concept, a wish even, until, that is, the person actually experiences it himself.  When this happens, and it does happen to everyone eventually, there is no doubt what it is.  And it is not, above all, only a notion.