Protest

The obvious objection to that would be: "You're dreaming, all that is just navel-gazing. Revolution is a matter of sweat and blood and tears. It is more effective to give oneself to a cause, to protest, to be an activist."

First of all, the one doesn't necessarily exclude the other. Challenging yourself, working on yourself, this doesn't mean you stop acting for social change, it means that you live it more deeply, more consistently. Secondly, activists tend to be as lazy and hypocritical, in their way, as ascetics. The ascetic monk in the cave or monastery is often hiding from life and responsibility, true, but he is not consuming the way so many modern "activists" are. You know, if you protest McDonald's but still drink Coca Cola, what is the point? If you have a sit-in at the nuclear power plant but still accept their electricity so you can watch television and play video games, what is the point? If you're allowing these sorts of contradictions to continue, it is because you are not challenging yourself, you're just pointing fingers. ...