In other words after an easy assent to some experience the reality of a life of hard work ahead to maintain or even re-experience this is required. It all seems now to be much harder than one expected. How many of us expect some fantastical spiritual awakening and are disappointed when the results seem mundane at best or even unnoticeable?
Physical illness is much the same. All too often people come to the hospital to be cured or repaired and then once they are feeling better return to the old habits that got them ill in the first place because when faced with the reality of change it is much easier to fall back into old patterns. This is one of the reasons why I try not to cast moral judgments on those with addictions to alcohol or drugs. Their basic behavior is mimicked in all places in society and when we look at basic behaviors we might even see ourselves doing the same sorts of things but with different ‘drugs’. Yes drugs are harmful, yet so too is the lack of exercise or poor eating.
The person in detox getting clean is not much different from the person who comes in because their blood sugar is all out of whack because they failed to monitor their blood sugar or refused to modify their diet. The feel better, promise to make changes, then when faced with the hard reality of what that actually means find the challenge more than they can endure. Those addicted to stress or to an inactive lifestyle also find making changes difficult. Heck we all, if we are honest find making changes difficult.
In our Buddhist practice we may experience the overcoming of some great obstacle and feel a certain amount of satisfaction at the accomplishment. Then not too long afterwards we wake up to the reality that it was just one of a series of life events that we will continue to confront in one form or another. Our choice at this point is the same for the addict, or the diabetic, or the heart patient. What will we do going forward? What means more to us the goal of enlightenment, the goal of good health, or the easy way of returning to old patterns and behaviors.
The practice of Buddhism is not a guarantee of a life of complete ease and trouble free living. To believe this is to believe in a fantasy. Buddhism is a constant application of a life of spiritual practice, and awakening by degrees, obstacles that test us and push us to make changes we would otherwise overlook. This is why the medicine of the Lotus Sutra sometimes does not appear to be of good flavor. The taste of practice and devotion is not always sweet, even though the outcome is certainly the taste of nectar.
Another aspect of inertia in life is the notion that what one experiences within oneself is somehow more real than the things that are manifest outside of our lives. In other words the inertia that our interpretation of events is the truth and reality and that we are somehow seeking to detach ourselves from the physical plane of existence. I believe nothing could be further from the truth. I wrote about this in the Acedia chapter, however there are some additional points I think are worth mentioning under Inertia.
