The Zen moment with Grace Jones & Lady Gaga

Picture 52 The so-called Zen moment or your moment of Zen is when we are caught off guard, our cultural filters suddenly being ineffective. At this exact moment we see somethingor an eventas it is. We might even say the Zen moment is seeing something as it really is rather than as it is supposed to be according to our culture.

Such moments, I need to add, help to put us onto a spiritual path so that we might one day come to realize that our all-too-human world is completely illusory. It has no reality behind it or holding it up. From a Buddhist perspective, it is starkly empty; a mere composition of Mind which is the only true substance of reality.

It this context, are the performances of Grace Jones or Lady Gaga expressive of the Zen moment? To a limited extent one would have to say, yes (more so with the iconic Grace Jones). At times their performances do catch us with all of our filters down around our ankles with our bare arses showing.

In such a moment words like chic or avant-garde also come to mind which might be considered, in some instances, to be branches growing off the trunk of the Zen moment. Incidentally, none of this should be confused with Dadaism which was a post World War I cultural movement that ridiculed bourgeois society, mainly its art, cultural values and practices. It signaled the beginning of postmodernism which is the truth of modernity showing its underbelly.

I need to say that not everything Grace Jones or Lady Gaga does expresses the Zen moment. Far from it. Only to the extent that they are able to neutralize our cultural filters, catching us off guard, can there be a Zen moment. Short of the Zen moment, both can lay claim to being chic and avant-garde. (I confess, I still enjoy Grace Jones. She is certainly a tough act to follow even fo! r Lady G aga.)


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