Karl Marx in his Theses on Feuerbach protested that the philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways, when the point is to change it. (Die Philosophen haben die Welt verschieden interpretiert; aber es kommt darauf an, sie zu veraendern.) His century-mate, Soren Kierkegaard, at the opposite end of the political spectrum, but sharing Marx’s disdain for mere theory, might have said that the point was to change oneself, to become oneself. Both thinkers were anti-contemplative and anti-speculative, but in such wildly divergent ways! The social activist Marx denied interiority by trying to merge the individual into his species-being (Gattungswesen) while the existentialist Kierkegaard fetishized interiority: “Truth is subjectivity” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript).
Both see the contemplative life, whether philosophical or scientific or mystical, as a form of evasion, evasion of the tasks of building socialist society (Marx), or of becoming an individual (Kierkegaard). And how divergent these life-tasks! Transcendence through a super-socialization in which the individual is dissolved in the collective versus transcendence through individuation. The contemplative, however, seeks a different form of transcendence of present self: transcendence into the impersonal, asocial, truth.
One sort of contemplative is the mystical quietist. Buddha may perhaps serve as an example. If Marx said that the point was to change the world, Buddha said that the point was to deny the world by extinguishing desire. Suffering is pervasive, and its root is desire; so a radical solutuion entails an eradication of suffering's root. But both agree that theoretical understanding is not the point, but a distraction from the task of transformation of society or self. In a famous Buddhist image, if I have been shot with a poisoned arrow, it does not particularly matter whether I can plot the arrow’s trajectory, provide a chemical analysis of the poison, or ascertain the archer’s social class. The unum necessarium is to extract the arrow. On fire with desire, we suffer; so extinguish the fire, in particular the 'fire below,' and enter into Cessation.
Social activism and Kierkegaardian fideism are dead-ends. The activist illusion is to suppose that unimproved man can improve the world in some global (as opposed to piecemeal) way that could satisfy our need for Transcendence. Those who haven’t seen through this illusion by now will probably never see through it. But mere fideism, mere subjective passion, mere intensification of inwardness is no solution either. What good is mere believing without knowing? What one wants and needs is direct contact with the Absolute. This mystical quietism can supply in some measure – but with its own excesses and limitations that can only be made good by a healthy application of discursive reason tempered by moral conscience.
A balanced life integrates philosophy and religion, mysticism and morality; reason and faith, intuition and conscience. A system of existential checks and balances, if you will. Nice work if you can get it.