James Baldwin on Reconciling Acceptance and Action

Notes on the change that begins in the heart.

My meditation teacher of many years often reckons with the difficult question of how we are to reconcile acceptance — the need to meet reality uncomplainingly on its own terms, so central to Buddhist philosophy, so central to all spiritual freedom — with activism in a world badly in need of repair.

Thinking about this paradox recently, I was reminded of a passage from the indispensable 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son (public library) by...