Nature is abuzz with action, always. The individual's choice of withdrawing from action, either in the tamasic sense of inertial stupor, or in the sattvic sense of stepping back from life-activity, are not decisions of non-action but certain forms of action. Even if he does not do, he thinks, feels, emotes - that is action. Even if he stops all movements of thought and feeling, he still breathes, and that is action. Even if he is absolutely still in every sense of the term, by dint of his very presence of being, he is in communion with nature, and hence squarely in the middle of action.
The individual's choice of non-action does not prevent Nature's ongoing action around him, straddling the spectrum between the superconscious and the unconscious. His refusal of personal action is also a form of action, i.e. that of his perceived non-participation in Nature's action. Understood from the standpoint of him being inextricably connected to all that is, his choice of non-action changes nothing, or changes everything, depending on one's vantage.
The choice, then, is not between action and non-action, but between appropriate action or inappropriate action, between right action or wrong action, between sovereign mastery and helpless subjection. It is either Soul over Nature, or Nature over Soul. There is no third alternative.
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