whom can leave at will, while the narrator, psychologically oblivious to his dualistic
personalities, cannot; he is trapped in the hive of his mind.
The second haiku is still steeped in the language of the marketplace (“career”), but it is
moving in the right direction: to have a home (a “nest") in the Buddhist sense is a delusion
because it implies permanence, a place of origin and trajectory to and from. Being “[wjithout
just one nest," though, a bird, like a follower of the Tao, is free to “call the world home” (55);
the bird’s very existence is its reason for being. Birds do not operate in the realm of dualism
because they have no perceived self-nature. Sadly, our narrator’s life is his “career” in the
sense that it, at least until he creates fight club, is his life. Read another way, though, “Life is
your career” rings true with Buddhist thought in that our “job” is to live in the present moment;
our career is right here right now. The third haiku moves closer towards an understanding of
nondualism and emptiness: “Flowers bloom and die / Wind brings butterflies or snow / A stone
won’t notice” (58). Like the bird in the previous haiku, these things—flowers, weather, insects,
a stone—don’t exist to be anything other than what they are; they traverse the world of
interconnectivity willy-nilly without direction or care. This haiku addresses the seasons and the
transformative nature of existence that goes along with them, as well as provides a lesson on
egolessness in the final line: the stone pays no mind to what is going on around it— it doesn’t
grasp on to delusions; it doesn’t create alternate realities for itself; it takes what comes
because it exists in the realm of no-mind. The final haiku in Chapter 8 shows the narrator
slowly gaining insight into the cruelty of his personality. Marla has just asked if she can stay
over for the night: “I don’t answer," he says. “I count in my head: five syllables, seven, five. A
tiger can smile / A snake will say it loves you / Lies make us evil” (62). Though slow to
recognize his true relationship with both Marla and Tyler, he is at least cursorily aware that he
is presenting Marla with a lie-infested fagade, and in doing so, is becoming “evil.”
Two pages before this admission, though, the narrator once again superficially claims
enlightenment while thinking of ways he can torment his boss: “I’m enlightened now,” he says.
“You know, only Buddha-style behavior. Spider chrysanthemums. The Diamond Sutra and the
Blue Cliff Record. Hari Rama, you know, Krishna, Krishna. You know, Enlightened” (60). But
as Tyler tells him, “‘Sticking feathers up your b u tt. . . does not make you a chicken’” (60). His
use of the phrase “you know” three times here highlights his lack of understanding the words
and concepts he espouses similarly to the “little HAIKU things” mentioned above. Further:
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