snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all a part
of the same compost pile . . . Our culture has made us all the same . . . We all want the same.
Individually, we are nothing" (126). Reminiscent of the narrator’s harsh lesson about
impermanence at the beginning of the novel (“everything you can ever accomplish will end up
as trash”), we get a powerful mix of Zen and anti-consumerist r hetoric. According to Zen, there
is no such thing as permanent, unique individuality, and once divested of ego, we indeed “are
nothing” in the sense that we are no longer grasping at preconceived notions of identity. From
a biological and spiritual standpoint, though, this nothing is everything, for we actually “are the
same decaying organic matter as everyone [and everything] else” (126).
At the end of the novel, as the narrator is awaiting the explosion of the Parker-Morris
Building with himself in it, Marla and members of one of his former support groups have
selflessly come to save him, “all the bowel cancers, the brain parasites, the melanoma people,
the tuberculosis people are walking, limping, wheelchairing toward [him]” (195). It is here, for
the first time that he acts even remotely compassionate by telling them to get out before the
building explodes. They know the building is about to be destroyed, Maria explains, showing
that they have selflessly put themselves in harm's way to save him. “This was like a total
epiphany moment for me,” he says (195). That someone who cares for him would put herself
in harm’s way is really a pretty pathetic epiphanic moment, but considering the ego-centric way
he has used Zen throughout his ordeal, it is a concession we should at least grant him. With
the police chopper on its way, “and Marla and all the support group people who couldn’t save
themselves” trying to save him, he shoots his cheek out, effectively “killing” Tyler and calling to
mind the Buddhist saying that if you meet Buddha on the street you should kill him (197). That
is, eliminate all preconceived notions, even the goal of Buddhahood.
In the brief final chapter, the narrator awakens in what he thinks is heaven, everything
“white on white,” a world devoid of advertising slogans and designer home furnishing
catalogues (197). His psychiatrist, whom he thinks is God, asks why he caused so much
suffering when “each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness [ . . . ]
God's got it all wrong,” the narrator says; “We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either.
We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens” (198). Initially, the narrator seems to
at least intellectually comprehend prajhSpSramita, recognizing that Tyler’s earlier injunctions
that we are "crap” and “trash” were merely a form of ego-centric self-flagellation rather than
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