I am sure you are familiar with the poem by Robert Frost “Road Not Taken.” The last three lines of the poem are:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

This poem has been referred many times as “taking the road less traveled.” But what does this really mean? It is a call for the reader to forge his or her owns way in life and not follow the path that others have already taken. Isn’t this really what the Buddha taught?

About thirty years ago Scott Peck wrote a best selling book by this title, “The Road Less Traveled.” The opening line of Peck’s book is “Life is difficult.” He goes on to quote the Buddha and the Four Noble Truths. Peck’s book is about accepting responsibility for our lives. Which is really what I believe Buddhism is about - accepting responsibility for our lives.

First, I’d like to examine the other road - the road most often taken. We can think of it as the path to samsara. I think of it as the path to “victimhood.”

This is the road that all of us are all too familiar with it. It is the road of habitual patterns, of knee jerk emotional tendencies. It is the road of hardening the heart. How many times have we found ourselves stuck in the culvert of our own anger because we didn’t like the current situation?

In Peck’s book there is a section entitled “Escape From Freedom.” I love that title because it is such an oxymoron. It is like the term “spiritual materialism” or the term “ordinary magic.” Escape from freedom? Isn’t freedom supposed to liberate you? How can you escape from it? Another way of putting this is “not accepting responsibility for your life.”

When we complain about our lives or the situations in our lives we are victims not accepting responsibility. Things are the way they are - how else can they be? HH Dalai Lama says what is the use in worry? If you can change a situation you will. And if you can’t there is no point in worrying about it.

Jack Canfield author of “Chicken Soup For The Soul” has written another book entitled “The Success Principles.” In it he talks about this very thing - about people who complain about the experiences of life. He says they are complaining about the wrong thing, it isn’t the experience that they are unhappy with but rather the outcome. And the outcome of an experience is the combination of the experience plus your response to that experience. So, he says if you are unhappy with the outcome complaining about the experience does no good, what you must change is your response to the experience.

He actually puts this in the form of a formula.

E + R = O

Where E stands for “experience,” R stands for your “response, and O stands for “outcome.”

Recently I was visiting my Buddhist inmates at the United States Disciplinary Barracks (military prison) I learn so much from them. We were talking about this topic and Jake said that for the first 3 years of his incarceration he was stuck in the ditch of the road most often taken. He was unhappy and trying in every way to fight the system. Eventually he realized the situation was not going to change. What needed to change was his response - or his attitude. So he needed to change the way he was relating to the situation. He said he allowed more spaciousness in his life and situations and that made all the difference. Ultimately we are the only one responsible for our lives.

Throughout our lives and everyday we are forced to make choices just as Jake did. We must choose if we are going to accept responsibility for our lives. The famous German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Life always gets harder toward the summit- the cold increases responsibility increases.” So, real freedom doesn’t mean a lack of responsibility, but in fact it means we become more responsible beings.

So, the point to all of this is that every one of us must decide every day which road to take. It is up to us - it is our choice. If we fail to choose, then that is a choice in itself. When we fail to choose we are taking the road most traveled. It is the road of victimhood. Then we can blame situations in our life on other people for our unhappiness.

However, if we take the Buddha’s advice we will take the road less traveled. We will choose to accept responsibility for our lives. To do spiritual practice and work on our minds to transform our body, speech and mind from the afflictive emotions of anger, greed, jealously and lust into the enlightened activities of compassion & wisdom.

Choose every day to take more responsibility for your life. If you don’t like a life-experience, then change the way you respond to it. Choose to do spiritual practice and to allow more spaciousness in your life and into situations. By doing these things you will be taking the road less traveled.