Click to see full oxherding series

“Here are the hands,” begins Lucille Clifton in “ten oxherding pictures,” the poem she first published in 1999 and later collected in her 2008 volume, Voices. Her verses are based on the well-known series of pictures, attributed to 12th Century Zen master Kuoan Shiyuan, that employ the ox as a metaphor of the enlightened mind, first merely glimpsed, then desperately sought after by the herder, before being patiently tamed and released along with self-delusion and the poisons of attachment, ignorance, and craving. Clifton’s hands are the instruments of practice that make the parable her own; their opening, lifting, clenching, and folding serve as physical manifestations of the wisdom necessary to seek the true self:

they have allowed me only such
privilege as owed to flesh
or bone       no more       they know
they belong to the ox (lines 1-11)

Yet as Clifton imagines the touch of fingertips or the grasping of fists, her poem carries special resonance as someone who, like other women in her family, was born with six fingers on each hand. Clifton reflected upon her unusual situation in poems such as “i was born with twelve fingers,” in which she openly admires the extra fingers as “wonders” that, despite being removed in her infancy, still hold a kind of power that connects her to a community of African American women. These generations of “terrible shadowy hands” bear witness against the accusations of black female strength as dangerous sorcery, while offering comfort to those of us who may yearn to extend our own “invisible fingers“ in the spiritual embrace of our mothers and daughters. Here are the hands that convey the poem’s expression of nirmanakaya: the bliss-bestowing hands with which Clifton models the Buddha’s teaching for the benefit of all beings.

Ultimately, the Zen Oxherding Pictures are an invitation to all seekers on the Middle Path. Its fundamental truths emerge in any adaptation, whether interpreted through story, as in Charles Johnson’s novel of the same name, or through modern art, as in the images and media currently on display at The Japan Society in New York. But Clifton’s poem also asks us to consider how cultural difference might shape her insights along the way: what does it mean for a black woman poet to be an Ox Herder? How does she relinquish the notion of an inherently existent self that is often regarded in African American feminist traditions as a hidden treasure to be found, asserted with pride, and protected from harm? What is to be gained by conceding such a hard-won claim to her name, her story?

Near the start of her journey, Clifton as the poet-speaker moves from her birthplace in New York to her home in Maryland, reflecting on the fifty years she has spent arriving to a place of inner contentment. The traces of a deeper truth are “as tracks/in the buffalo snow” that lead to her mirror’s reflection (2:1-2). In Baltimore, Clifton writes of:

voices whispering
in a room where no one sits
except myself

and what do the hands make of that (2:7-11)

Such questioning, here and throughout the poem, is essential to the task that the Oxherding Pictures inspire, for as John Daido Loori states in his commentary, “We begin our spiritual quest by bringing our doubts into view. Our questions need to be real, like the pain we feel living an inauthentic life” (4). In this moment, Clifton journeys away from parents, children, and lovers. She leaves behind familial and societal expectations and reflects upon the solitude of an empty room (this bag of bones and flesh?) that houses what she characterizes as, “not this me/not that me” (3:11-12).

Quests for an authentically-lived existence also distinguish the modern African American literary traditions that influenced (and were in turned influenced by) Lucille Clifton’s craft. Black women writers, in particular, highlight networks of community, homespaces, and ancestral figures on the path to actualization. But consider how a memorable character such as Janie in Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, embarks on a journey of self-discovery to assert a sense of being independent from the prevailing assumptions of her race, class, or gender. In other literary works, the identity struggles of African Americans are expressed through naming, or more precisely, the individual and collective capacity to name. I think, for instance, of the error made by a drunken clerk at the Freedman’s Bureau in Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel Song of Solomon that saddled Macon Dead with his family’s grim surname. Morrison’s story abounds with re-named people, black folk christened with names clever or careless or sacred. To be able to claim a name for one’s self, then, is a cherished freedom often denied slaves and their descendants.

Nevertheless, Clifton parts with names in her “ten oxherding pictures.” She leaves behind the labels that fix reality in place and wanders among indecision until she stumbles upon an unfamiliar state “where/no thing is defined” (3:14). We live in a time, as Loori reminds us, in which “we don’t think we’ve got it unless we can name it“ (25). And indeed, when Clifton insists upon an externalized identity as the “lucille who masters ox,” her hands respond with a warning: “what can be herded/is not ox” (5:4, 7-8). To transcend the lure of self-grasping takes courage. The Ox Herder must learn to accept that all names, whether imposed or freely chosen, are merely sliding signifiers of impermanence and yet, like the invisible fingers Clifton inherited, still part of our perceived reality.

what comes
when you whisper
ox
is not
the ox
ox
begins in silence
and ends
in the folding
of hands (9:1-10)

It was not until after Clifton passed away in early 2010 that I discovered her “ten oxherding pictures.” The poet, whom I had always cherished for the elegant precision of her language in expressing the everyday struggles of black women, now strikes a different, but not altogether unfamiliar, chord in my appreciation of her work. Clifton’s voice in her most critically-acclaimed poems is straight-forward, deeply autobiographical, and unflinching (as in two of my favorites, “song at midnight” and the playful “homage to my hips”) and yet, she can fully immerse her reader in metaphor through the simple act of “cutting greens” or the stark declarations of “cruelty” in which the indifferent killing of roaches insinuates suffering on a greater scale.

Clifton’s adaptation in “ten oxherding pictures” brings together these elements of her distinctive aesthetic style and thoughtfully utilizes her own cultural experience to underscore the risks and rewards of the timeless search for enlightenment. To be clear, Clifton did not consider herself a Buddhist. She notes that she was unfamiliar with the images of the ancient Zen series when she wrote the poem. Yet in imagining herself through the helping hands of an Ox Herder, she found a journey that resonated with her own pursuit of creative enrichment, collective liberation, and social change. The world of which she writes, in which “no thing is ox/all things are ox” (8:3-4) is undoubtedly our own.

Works Cited:

• Clifton, Lucille. “cruelty, don’t talk to me about cruelty” Next: New Poems. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1989.
• ——. “i was born with twelve fingers” and “homage to my hips,” Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1987.
• ——. “song at midnight,” The Book of Light. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1993.
• ——. “ten oxherding pictures,” Voices. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd, 2008.
• Daw, Jack. “The Oxherding Pictures,” Abstract Emotion and the Japan Society, Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt. 27 Aug. 2010.
• Holladay, Hilary. Wild Blessings: The Poetry of Lucille Clifton. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2004: 36-37.
• Loori, John Daido. Riding the Ox Home: Stages on the Path of Enlightenment. Boston: Shambala, 2002.

Qiana Whitted
Qiana is the Arts Editor and sits on the Editorial Board of Prapañca: a buddhist journal. She is also Associate Professor of English and African-American Studies at the University of South Carolina, and the author of the book, “A God of Justice?”: The Problem of Evil in Twentieth-Century Black Literature.

Continue the conversation on our editor’s blog.

Send a letter to the editor or continue this conversation on Twitter or Facebook.