When I was sixteen years old, a sophomore in high school, I watched Fight Club for the first time. The film had been released in 1999; I watched it in 2004. It was a videocassette version. It instantly became one of the most influential films of my life. I was struck by the unflinching violence and nihilism of the movie, taken in completely by the attitude and charisma of Brad Pitt’s character Tyler Durden, his anti-materialistic, anticapitalist philosophies, and his physique. Tyler Durden, as played by Brad Pitt, became my idol, my father figure (something I’d always lacked in real life), and my role model as I moved through high school and out into the “real” world. My friend Jake and I would spend hours discussing the deeper philosophies and multilayered themes and theories within the film, as well as the novel, written by Chuck Palahniuk.
To say that I was a highly impressionable young man when I discovered Fight Club would perhaps be an understatement: I had found Fight Club and Tyler Durden at a perfect moment in my life, where the influence of both would create the most effective and greatest impact on my developing self-identity. In essence, I became Tyler Durden.
I started smoking cigarettes because Brad Pitt smoked them in Fight Club. I threw away all material possessions that didn’t have immediate practical use in my life. I parked in no parking zones and threw the tickets on the ground without looking at them, and definitely without paying them. My clothing collection was gathered in thrift stores and lost and found bins. The ways of the real world didn’t apply to me; I broke all the rules that I could (and paid shockingly little consequence overall). However I thought that Tyler Durden would handle a situation, that’s how I handled it. Mix this narcissistic and antisocial behavior in with heavy drug use and alcohol abuse, and it was the perfect storm of an extremely self-destructive lifestyle, constantly teetering on the edge of annihilation. I wanted to destroy the status quo, I wanted to rage against any semblance of societal normalcy, and I wanted to destroy myself. “Hitting bottom,” as Tyler calls it in the film, was what I was striving for.
To this day, I’ve never been in a fight. It’s amazing to say that, given my past history, but it’s true. The violence and abuse in my childhood caused deep unconscious levels of internalized self-hatred, fear, and shame, all of which allowed for my persona of Tyler Durden to provide me with a sense of safety. All the violence of Fight Club was translated inward, turned against myself, creating an internal schism much like the one between the nameless narrator of Fight Club and Tyler. Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Tyler Durden has been derided by many critics, with some calling Durden an “adolescent’s wet dream.” And maybe that’s true. But if it is, it only works to further solidify my point: the persona of Tyler Durden as expressed through myself was fully actualized when I was in the prime of my youth. By eighteen and nineteen years old, out of high school and on my own, I was as close to being Tyler Durden as I could get. He had infiltrated every fiber of my being, and I felt safe behind this personality. Nearly a decade of self-destruction followed.
I’m older now—thirty six years old. I’ve been clean and sober since age 28, and my life is quite different than it was in my late teens and twenties. For the past nine years I’ve practiced yoga and meditation, and I went deep into the study of Zen Buddhist philosophy. It’s a passion that continues to this day, and the idea of creating a comparative analysis between Fight Club (which is still one of my top 5 favorite films) and Zen philosophy had been in the back of my mind for years. Since watching the movie and exploring the theories behind the film with Jake as a late teenager, I always knew that there was more to Fight Club than what I initially understood. Eventually, as an adult, my years of Zen study had given me enough knowledge to start to articulate the connections that I had wanted to make in my youth. When I enrolled in a Composition course at SJSU, I had finally been given the opportunity to explore these themes fully.
The Zen principle of non-duality was a major focal point for me: how the concepts of “true mind” and “deluded mind” are actually one; they exist only in an interdependent state, and you can’t have one without the other. The violent and reckless devil-may-care attitude of Tyler Durden embodied the dark self-destructive lifestyle that I had pursued for years; and the realization of the depths of this violence, as seen through a new lens of sobriety and meditation, had given a new meaning to my life. It had proven that, just as in the film, my newly realized sense of self could not have been actualized had I not embraced that part of my past.
Below is my comparative analysis of Fight Club.
Note: Many subplots and characters in Fight Club are left unmentioned in this comparative analysis; this has been done intentionally in order to keep the focus on the greater Zen Buddhist themes of the film. By focusing only on the dynamic between the narrator and Tyler, one can easily grasp the Zen connections asserted, without being distracted by other aspects of the film’s plot that might convolute the points made.
Fight Club: Violence & Zen Buddhism
David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club was released to almost instant notoriety and intense controversy. Graphic scenes of pervasive violence, themes of antisocial behavior, nihilism, and toxic masculinity were some of the elements that made Fight Club such a polarizing and sensational film. Indeed, even in 2023 there is an ongoing discussion as to the message and the meaning behind Fight Club, and whether its violence is justified. Despite the uproar against the film, a seemingly unlikely interpretation of Fight Club is that it is also steeped in ancient Eastern thought and Zen Buddhist principles. The film, when viewed through the lens of Zen Buddhist philosophy, makes Fight Club one of the most misunderstood mainstream films of the twentieth century.
First, a brief overview of Zen is necessary. Essentially, Zen is the synthesis of two major Eastern philosophies: Buddhism (from India) and Taoism (from China). Tracing back to the fifth century BCE, this blend of Indian mysticism and Chinese practicality generated a large following and became a powerful practice of deep introspection, meditation, and the pursuit of self-actualization that remains as profoundly relevant today as when it was first founded. There are myriad branches of Buddhist and Taoist philosophies that incorporate different and unique elements into their teachings, but for the purpose of this analysis, a broad and generalized understanding of classical Zen Buddhist teachings will be used to draw comparisons to the film, beginning with the Buddha himself.
Fight Club can be divided into three acts, each of which corresponds directly to the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama’s own journey towards enlightenment. The three acts of the Buddha’s journey are roughly categorized as such: 1) Siddhartha, a prince, is plagued with complacency, living a highly royal and materialistic but unfulfilled life, void of meaning and purpose. 2) After abandoning his privileged and sheltered life, Siddhartha discovers the existence of both personal and universal suffering, causing a disruption of his own identity, which he tries to solve via various disciplines, including the act of self-destruction via asceticism. And 3) Finally, Siddhartha’s journey leads him into total desperation, including the possibility of suicide—when he finally makes a profound realization of self, finding enlightenment and a practice of true self-mastery. All three of these acts can be found in Fight Club, and are clearly reflected in the film.
In Fight Club, the protagonist is the nameless narrator, whose monotonous life of corporate complacency has led him to feel utterly isolated and unsatisfied. While mindlessly furnishing his high rise apartment with more and more needless items, the narrator opines: "Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct.” He suffers from insomnia, literally sleepwalking through his mundane and purposeless existence. His life, void of meaning, mirrors that of the first act of the Buddha’s journey, fulfilling the necessary primary components towards greater self-realization.
In the story of Siddhartha, the runaway prince first encounters disillusionment of his affluent and advantaged life through witnessing the suffering of others, mainly through his initial exposure to the sick, old, and dying villagers surrounding his kingdom. In Fight Club, the narrator has a similar introduction to suffering, as he becomes addicted to various support groups, mainly centered around terminal diseases. The narrator, though healthy, integrates himself into these groups in order to obtain a kind of newfound freedom, giving him a sense of peace through hopelessness that was previously inaccessible. The first instance of finding peace within the suffering of others takes place in a men’s support group for survivors of testicular cancer. While in an embrace with a cancer survivor, the narrator experiences a kind of cathartic release, a moment of enlightenment: “And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion, dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom” (Fight Club). This profound sense of wellbeing is momentary, however, as eventually another faker or “tourist” joins the various groups, making it impossible for the narrator to recreate his catharsis. Again, he reverts back to his insomniac state, depressed and despondent.
After a mysterious explosion destroys his apartment and all his belongings, the narrator’s identity is then disrupted with the appearance of the film’s antihero, Tyler Durden. Tyler is charismatic, attractive, and highly self-determining, calling out the insanity of mass consumerism and greed in a totalitarian capitalist society: “We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra” (Fight Club). Disgusted by materialistic greed, Tyler warns the narrator: “The things you own end up owning you.” Deeply influenced by Tyler’s philosophy, the narrator moves in with Tyler, gradually quits his job, turns his back on worldly possessions, and co-founds a local fight club at a nearby bar, thereby initiating a lifestyle of violence and aggressive asceticism. Thus begins the second act of the narrator’s journey: the search for meaning through suffering and self-destruction.
Around the midpoint of the film, there is a pivotal scene in which Tyler initiates the narrator into the pursuit of “hitting bottom:” losing everything, embracing death, and pursuing self-actualization through self-destruction and pain. After pouring chemical burn onto the narrator’s hand, the dialogue that follows is classic Zen philosophy. As the narrator struggles in pain, Tyler instructs him: “Stay with the pain, don’t shut this out . . . Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing . . . Stop. This is your pain, this is your burning hand, it’s right here . . . This is the greatest moment of your life, and you’re off missing it somewhere . . . First, you have to give up . . . You have to know—not fear—know that someday you are going to die.” All of these lines are virtually identical to countless Zen tenets, reflecting teachings of self-mastery and mindfulness that have been practiced over millennia, from the ancient teachers like the Buddha and Lao Tzu, to more modern spiritual figures like Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle. Finally, after the narrator accepts his pain and his mortality, Tyler states: “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” Such a statement has strong echoes of Zen. While it would be too repetitive to correlate each line with a specific Zen teaching, one quote from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching helps to encapsulate the obvious similarities: “If you want to be reborn, let yourself die. If you want to be given everything, give everything up.” The level of violence and self-destruction in the film intensifies as the local fight club scene grows in popularity, expanding into different states and becoming a terroristic group set on disrupting capitalism. Eventually reaching a breaking point with a near death car collision, the aftermath of the wreck places the narrator in the third and final act of his journey: the realization of self.
Arguably one of the greatest plot twists in 1990’s cinema, along with The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense, can be found in Fight Club. Truly, the unexpected revelation towards the final act of the film takes the concept of self-realization to a new and entirely literal level. The narrator, unable to find Tyler after the car crash, searches frantically as he realizes that the Fight Club-turned-terrorist group is plotting to blow up all the major credit card companies, effectively placing everyone back at zero, and creating a societal collapse. Wherever he searches, the narrator is being addressed as Tyler Durden; the mix up of identities comes to a crescendo when Tyler appears in the hotel with the narrator and their connection is revealed: Tyler and the narrator are the same person. Tyler is a figment of the narrator’s imagination, allowed to run wild until he became the predominant identity. As Tyler explains: “All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, fuck like you wanna fuck; I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not. . . People do it everyday: they talk to themselves . . . they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have, to just run with it.” With this realization, a violent showdown ensues between Tyler and the narrator, with one identity trying to destroy the other—again, the idea of self-destruction is taken to a completely literal level. At the film’s finale, the narrator regains control of his own identity, attempting suicide by gunshot in the mouth, an act of personal autonomy which kills Tyler.
Recognition that the dark, self-destructive, and alluring forces in our lives are in fact one in the same with the potential of our enlightenment and self-mastery exemplifies the Zen principle of non-duality. In Zen Buddhism, suffering and happiness are interdependent concepts; one cannot exist without the other. The symbol of the yin-yang, originated in Taoism, also emphasizes this point: the seemingly opposing forces of nature and of the mind are all interconnected and necessarily intertwined: darkness and light; fire and water; love and hate. It it this universal epiphany that the narrator realizes, in his deepest moment of confusion and disorientation, that he is Tyler Durden. Only after this realization of oneness can the narrator begin to confront the self-destructive elements of his personality and take control of his mind; he reclaims his full identity by recognizing that the seemingly opposing forces against him are in fact an integral part of himself, a Zen insight that could be termed as enlightenment.
During an interview, David Fincher, the director of Fight Club, explored the notion of Eastern philosophy within the film: “I don’t know if it’s Buddhism, but there’s the idea that on the path to enlightenment you have to kill your parents, your god, and your teacher” (Seton). This concept of killing the Buddha is a popular Zen koan, a “paradoxical anecdote or riddle used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment” (Oxford Language Dictionary). The idea is that anything or anyone that gets in one’s way while seeking self-actualization, even if it is a family member, a guru, a personal inspiration, or even the Buddha himself, the seeker must kill whatever is obstructing his path towards enlightenment. Zen master Lin-ji Yi-xuan, the founder of the Linji school of Chán Buddhism during the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE), expands on this notion: “Followers of the Way, if you want to get the kind of understanding that accords with the Dharma [the eternal and inherent nature of reality, regarded in Hinduism as a cosmic law underlying right behavior and social order (Oxford)], never be misled by others. Whether you’re facing inward or facing outward, whatever you meet, just kill it! If you meet a buddha, kill the buddha. If you meet a patriarch, kill the patriarch. If you meet an arhat, kill the arhat. If you meet your parents, kill your parents. If you meet your kinfolk, kill your kinfolk. Then, for the first time you will gain emancipation, will not be entangled with things, and will pass freely anywhere you wish to go.” In Fight Club, the charisma and philosophy of Tyler Durden turns him into a kind of guru to his followers; he’s someone who lives life according to his own rules, which in turn gives him a kind of power over the narrator. At first, Durden’s influence is alluring and liberating to the narrator, giving him a new sense of self and a feeling of personal freedom, but when Durden seeks to become the dominant figure in the narrator’s personality, the narrator must then kill the Buddha archetype of Tyler Durden in order to quite literally free himself from himself. This idea of violence as a means towards enlightenment is not counter to Zen philosophy; in fact it is a foundational aspect of the practice.
One of the great misconceptions of Zen Buddhist philosophy is that is a purely peaceful practice, passive in nature and gentle in its teachings. While inner peace is certainly an aspect of Zazen (the practice of seated meditation in Zen), the methods through which Zen students have attained this enlightenment range drastically, and inarguably include a deeply rooted culture of violence. These “violent pedagogical methods” are examined in great depth in Gregory Max Seton’s academic article “Killing the Buddha: Ritualized Violence in Fight Club through the Lens of Rinzai Zen Buddhist Practice.” As Seton explains:
“When Zen disciples are at the entry level, the teacher’s or his emissaries’ shouts and blows are understood as challenging disciples to commit themselves steadfastly to the path, breaking down their attachment to identity, building qualities such as courage and resourcefulness, and deepening their appreciation for the teacher’s wisdom and skillful means [….] When the disciples are at the advanced level, the teacher’s shouts and blows are understood as effectively shocking disciples out of their unreliable, dualistic and conceptual way of seeing into a state of non-dual reflexive awareness that is conducive to awakening” (Seton).
Importantly, Seton notes that disciples of Zen practice “mentally associate the violence with the seemingly miraculous, wordless, mind-to-mind transmission of spiritual awakening from teacher to disciple [….] Thus, beyond mere glorification within the traditional legends, violent pedagogical methods are considered essential to a teacher’s expression of his or her enlightened skill-in-means and to disciples’ paths to awakening” (Seton).
Such anecdotes are common among Zen masters and students. Indeed, some of the greatest historical figures of Zen Buddhism have attained and assisted others in attaining liberation through acts of violence. In a well-known story featuring Huang-Po, one of the greatest Chinese Zen masters, and the teacher of Lin-chi (Rinzai) Zen, the description of physical altercations between monks and a student could easily qualify as a Zen fight club. As Seton details:
“According to an oft-told story, whenever Lin-ji Yi-xuan had private encounters with his teacher Huang-po, he was repeatedly beaten and sent away, until he finally despaired, gave up, and left. When Lin-ji told the Master Ta-yu about all the beatings he received from Huang-po, Ta-yu praised Huang-po’s great kindness, causing Lin-ji to realize that the violent beatings had just been Huang-po’s skillful means for pointing out the way that his own ordinary mind already is the buddha.” As soon as Lin-ji reflected on the state of awareness he experienced in the beatings, he instantaneously attained awakening and exclaimed, “There is nothing special about Huang-po’s teaching!” Upon hearing this outburst, Ta-yu immediately struck Lin-ji for his seeming irreverence, but Lin-ji, who had intended no insult, responded without missing a beat by giving Master Ta-yu three blows to the ribs, thereby affirming his own enlightened understanding. In this way, violence was both a trigger for Lin-ji’s awakening and a spontaneous expression of it. (Seton).
These kinds of brutal initiation techniques are mirrored almost exactly in Fight Club, as Tyler and the narrator (unaware of their inter-existence) begin to transform their house into a ground zero base for a growing terrorist cell set on dismantling capitalistic society through various vandalization projects termed “Project Mayhem.” As the first applicant stands on the porch of the house, Tyler instructs the narrator: “If the applicant is young, tell him he’s too young. Old, too old; fat, too fat. If the applicant then waits for three days without food, shelter, or encouragement, he may then enter and begin his training.” This psychological and physical abuse is enacted on each applicant, as they are physically and verbally assaulted for three days without any putting up any resistance. One scene shows the narrator mercilessly hitting one applicant with a broomstick, screaming at him. While such actions may seem sadistic, these practices are mirrored almost exactly in many Zen monasteries. In one case, after the second world war, an aspiring Zen student named Sōkō sought to enter the Daitokuji monastery to begin his training, and was met with the same sort of aggressive approach, greatly testing his resolve. After waiting outside in the elements for an entire evening, “another monk appeared, armed with an oaken staff. ‘You were refused entrance, and yet you are still here, an eyesore to all. Please get out at once.’ When I made no move to leave, the monk changed his tone. ‘Deaf or something?’ he shouted, and with blows and kicks he sent me flying out of the gate. When I peered back inside I saw the monk had disappeared again. So I crept back stealthily and took up my position at the bench. This sequence was repeated several times” (Seton).
Seton makes clear that the lack of resistance by the student during his beatings is an integral part of the initiation process, or his niwazame:
Here, the fact that Sōkō put up “no resistance” is an important part of the Zen training which helps monks “enter the monastery completely emptied, humble, and compliant” and gives them a small taste of the non-dual Buddhist experience of immanence and transcendence, similar to—to borrow a Christian phrase—courageously turning the other cheek. Clearly, Sōkō struggled at first and questioned his own resolve, but eventually made it through, as [Sōkō] reports:
“My niwazame lasted three days. By the end my face was congested with blood. All my teeth felt loose, my eyes felt as though they were popping out of their sockets, and my hips felt as if they had been wrenched out of joint. I had come to Daitokuji on the first of March, and it was bitterly cold that year. All I had on my feet were sodden straw sandals. The cold had risen from my toes to my thighs—my legs had become completely frozen and numb. I think it was an act of real courage to go on and on in this state, pulling myself back from the brink of exhaustion and despair to carry through with my vow to practice Zen” (Seton).
If such extreme levels of aggression and physical abuse can be found in common Zen practice throughout millennia, then Fight Club certainly deserves a second look in order to see the vast similarities between Zen Buddhist philosophy and the film. The level of physical violence in Fight Club continues to generate controversy about the film’s deeper meanings and messages. However, when viewed through the lens of Zen Buddhism, and with a clearer understanding of the utilization of ritualized violence as a means towards self-realization in Zen Buddhist practice, Fight Club begins to take on deeper levels of meaning, bringing more substance and spirituality that can help explain, if not justify, the film’s violence. Director David Fincher states that, along with Buddhist philosophy, much of the film is a metaphorical exploration of suffering, rage, and Nietzschean philosophy:
“[Fight Club is] a metaphor, it’s not about a real guy who really blows up buildings, it’s about a guy who’s led to feel this might be the answer based on all the confusion and rage that he’s suffered and it’s from that frustration and bottled rage that he [first] creates Tyler. And he goes through a natural process of experimenting with notions that are complicated and have moral and ethical implications that the Nietzschean übermensch doesn’t have to answer to [ . . . .] And that’s the conflict at the end—you have Tyler Durden, who is everything you would want to be, except real and empathetic. He’s not living in our world, he’s not governed by the same forces, he is an ideal” (Seton).
Critical reviews of Fight Club were mostly positive, although the film generated a long list of detractors as well. Patrick McGavin of The Hollywood Reporter stated that there was “something deeply unsettling about a work that uncritically espouses brutality as a function of alienation and nonconformity.” Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal called it “an arresting, eventually appalling excursion into social satire by way of punishing violence.” Roger Ebert stated that Fight Club contained “some of the most brutal, unremitting, nonstop violence ever filmed.” These reviews are admittedly valid in their assessment of the film: the violence is strong, and at times overwhelming. But it is not in spite of Fight Club’s depictions of violence that makes a Zen interpretation applicable; it is because of the film's unflinching violence and depictions of deeply self-destructive tendencies that the themes of Eastern philosophy can be so effectively explored. The violence of the film, pervasive as it may be, rests on the surface of a much deeper underlying message; one that explores meaning beyond self-destruction, and how recognizing the darkest parts of ourselves can transform our own suffering into sense and self-actualization. Fight Club, however unlikely it may seem, is indeed the embodiment of Zen philosophy. In the film’s final scene, the narrator overlooks the city as the surrounding skyscrapers of credit card companies explode and collapse into chaos. It is the end of one chapter, and the beginning of another, brought on by total and utter destruction. For all the violence and perceived nihilism in the film, including themes of depression, suicide, death, destruction, and terrorism, a quote from Layman Pang, the celebrated Chinese Zen Buddhist philosopher, perfectly encapsulates a major message of the film: “To preserve life, it must be destroyed. Having completely destroyed it, one dwells in peace for the first time” (Pang).
Sources Cited
Fight Club. Directed by David Fincher, performances by Brad Pitt, Edward Norton. 20th Century Studios, 1999.
“Koan,” Noun; “Dharma,” Noun. Oxford Dictionary. https://languages.oup.com/ Accessed 11/29/23.
Seton, Gregory Max. “Killing the Buddha: Ritualized Violence in Fight Club through the Lens of Rinzai Zen Buddhist Practice.” MDPI, Practicing Buddhism Through Film. Accessed November 30, 2023.
McGavin, Patrick Z.. “Fight Club: THR’s 1999 Review.” The Hollywood Reporter. Sept. 13,
1999. Accessed 9/21/23.Morgenstern, Joe. “Violent 'Fight Club' is a Theater of Cruelty -- and Not Just For Actors.”
The Wall Street Journal. Oct. 15, 1999. Accessed 9/21/23.Ebert, Roger. “Fight Club.” Roger Ebert. Oct 15, 1999. Accessed 9/21/23.