“Running is simply to move through time and space, step-by-step. But there is a splendor in that simplicity. In a car we move of course much faster, farther and more comfortably. But we are not moving on our own power and in our own right. We cash in prior labor for present motion. Being beneficiaries of science and engineering and having worked to pay for a car, gasoline, and roads, we now release what has been stored and use it for transportation. What I am doing now, driving, requires no effort, and little or no skill or discipline. I am a divided person; my achievement lies in the past, my enjoyment in the present. But in the runner, effort and joy are one; the split between means and ends, labor and leisure is healed…the runner is mindful of the body because the body is intimate with the world. The mind becomes relatively disembodied when the body is severed from the depth of the world when the world is split into commodious surfaces and inaccessible machineries. Thus the unity of ends and means, of mind and body, and of body and world is one and the same. It makes itself felt in the vividness with which the runner experiences reality.”

I think you’re right to consider death in the context of this religious ceremony since death and the (rightful, natural) fear of it is a major crux of religious belief. It is easy to allow our intense longing for eternal life to give rise to belief in eternity, but such thinking (or non-thinking) should be avoided if one wishes to avoid the charge of “wish fulfillment.” While eternal existence may be true for other reasons, the mere longing for eternal existence does not, in itself, entail it. On the other hand, and without discounting other possible philosophical explanations for eternal existence, wish fulfillment has its psychological benefits, and our lives are affected more by our own psychology than what is metaphysically accurate. So perhaps believing in an eternal existence despite its metaphysical accuracy would contribute to a flourishing existence.