Robert Frost’s Dharma and Ours: On Teaching ‘Directive’

Abstract If seeking an elusive quarry turns out to be for Robert Frost a reclamation of his own self adrift in a troublesome world and nearly lost amidst material distractions, for a teacher and students, reading ‘Directive’ is at once a challenge and an exemplary lesson in dharma. If readers are ‘lost enough’ in what they read, ‘lost’ to their familiar world of routine analytical protocols, they will be better prepared to advance cautiously toward the ruins of rituals and parables in mythic memory. For those of us who pick and choose our words and roads with care, the real challenge is to realize that our destination is hardly our destiny. This article draws upon the processes unfolding in a classroom when Frost’s ‘Directive’ leads to revelations that sometimes seem perplexing but true in the light of a dharmic idea in perfect action. On the road to chance discoveries, the trekkers pay informed attention to worlds where meanings matter differently, much as other lives enrich theirs the more they appreciate such strangers amidst them. Read in tandem with Frost’s source in Walden, Indian students are quick to see the poet’s map that points the way to think otherwise: towards de-worlding. The lesson they learn is the need to evolve their peregrine consciousness.