I heard they finished the Bridge to Nowhere.
And then demolished it.
It’s too bad. I kinda liked it.
The Bridge to Nowhere was an architectonic faux pax on the Long Island campus of an otherwise respectable institution of higher learning. The idea was to build a raised pedestrian walkway that would connect the Student Union to the Library.
Construction began.
Then the funding ran out.
So construction stopped.
As did the bridge, the last portion of it surrealistically hanging out over the lawn, offering those who ascended to it a short walk to . . . nowhere.
Which meant it wasn’t really a bridge.
The essential attribute of a bridge is to connect one thing to another. If there’s no connection, it’s not a bridge.
Alas, the Bridge to Nowhere couldn’t fulfill its dharma.
Just as the dharma of sugar is to be sweet and the dharma of the sun is to shine, the dharma of a bridge is to connect.
Everything has a dharma: an essential nature or defining function that makes it what it is.
Even the eight material elements that make up our bodies—earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence, and ego—all have their own dharmas:
- The dharma of earth is to be solid; to provide structure and support
- The dharma of water is the be fluid; to provide nourishment
- The dharma of fire is to radiate; to facilitate transformation
- The dharma of air is to move; to both cause and support motion
- The dharma of ether is to provide space for all the other elements to exist and interact
- The dharma of the mind is to process sensory inputs, register feelings, and generate the will to act
- The dharma of the intelligence is to analyze and make decisions
- The dharma of the ego is to establish a subjective boundary of self-definition
Together, these eight elements have a collective dharma: to provide a vehicle for consciousness to experience the material world.
And there’s a ninth subtle element: time. The dharma of time is to provide the tracks on which the train of our experience of the material world is running.
What about yoga?
Yes, yoga has a dharma, too: to be a bridge.
Except yoga is a bridge to somewhere.
Linguistically emerging from the Sanskrit root yuj—yoke—the word “yoga” implies making a dynamic connection between one thing and another, such as the mind and body or the intellect and the heart or consciousness and our true nature.
Of course, yoga is not so much a structure as it is a process; a tool kit for building our own bridge to higher consciousness.
Yoga is a transcendental technology and the perfection of yoga is a feat of metaphysical engineering; the completion of a bridge that connects us to a state of being that transcends time.
Which brings up an interesting question: what if we run out of time? What if we don’t complete our “yoga bridge” before our lives end?
Arjuna asks Krishna the same question in the Bhagavad Gita, to which Krishna replies,
This should give us enough reassurance to continue from wherever we’re at because the only way to fail is to stop.
The Gita describes the whole material world as a kind of bridge to nowhere; a place where everything comes to an end, often abruptly or unexpectedly. For most of us, we meet the end wishing we could continue, thinking that it should continue, that life shouldn’t just end, that it doesn’t make sense for the journey to just. . . stop.
But the Gita also tells us that it doesn’t stop, that death is an interruption during which we change bodies and then we continue on.
So it’s good to know that yoga is a bridge we can keep building life after life, for as long as it takes us to complete it.
The Bridge to Nowhere was eventually completed, though not as originally intended, and it ended up being a rarely used eyesore that carried a legacy of embarrassment—students wore T-shirts emblazoned with the snarky barb, “Stoney Brook University: the Bridge to Nowhere.”
So, they tore it down.
The magic of yoga’s “Bridge to Somewhere” is that it can’t be torn down, only left unfinished, and there will always be time to keep building it.
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k