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“If we truly aspire to ending our personal ignorance and craving, supporting relationships rooted in metta and compassion, and contributing to human flourishing and to a just and humane society, then we need a fully immersive, always-on engagement with the Noble Eightfold Path...As we approach the Buddha's discourses, our modern, individualistic minds may be baffled by descriptions of elevated mind states. Our scientism may be challenged by teachings on rebirth, and our religions or cultures that posit a self or soul may not immediately mesh with teachings on momentariness and relinquishment. But we must be willing to be confronted by those challenges and willing to not know the answers…We must engage a whole-life path at an ever-shifting balance point between urgency and patience. Death is near; unskillfulness and delusion are easy to get lost in, and we practice as if our hair were on fire...The Buddhist path has traditionally been conceived of as unfolding over multiple lifetimes. Our modern cosmologies do not provide this same kind and patient framework, so we need to remember the deep roots of our hunger and confusion, let them build ardor in our hearts, and with patience, appreciate that a workable path is available to us.”