The Journey of Self-Realization: Buddhism and Black Identity in Oxherding Tale by Charles Johnson

Abstract

This paper examines how Charles Johnson’s Oxherding Tale reimagines the African American slave narrative through the lens of Buddhist philosophy, constructing a unique path of self-realization for its mixed-race protagonist, Andrew Hawkins. Rather than depicting freedom solely in terms of physical escape or social equality, Johnson recasts liberation as an inner journey, aligned with the Zen Buddhist path toward enlightenment as expressed in the Ten Oxherding Pictures. Hawkins’s life is framed as a spiritual pilgrimage: “I saw the ten oxherding pictures of my life... what I sought I already was” (153). This moment of awakening deconstructs not only the master/slave binary but also the illusion of a fixed racial self. The narrative explores the Buddhist doctrine of anatta (no-self) through Hawkins’s gradual detachment from ego, desire, and identity: “I was neither Black nor white, neither slave nor free. I simply was” (178). This declaration underscores the novel’s challenge to both racial essentialism and Western notions of stable identity. Johnson thus offers a metaphysical resistance to racial determinism, one that resonates with both Buddhist non-duality and Black existentialism. By merging Buddhist insight with African American historical memory, Oxherding Tale presents a radical model of subjectivity rooted in awareness, impermanence, and ethical transformation.