Religions (and more broadly, ideologies) are effectively system prompts for humans. Humans tend to one-shot respond with strict adherence to the system prompt. Meditation allows you to *notice* and double click on the chain-of-thought reasoning box, identify cognitive dissonance, and ultimately peel back the illusion of self.
Seen through this lens, Buddhism is categorically different than most religious ideologies. At its core, it explicitly refuses to give you a system prompt.