21 Taras for 21 Bridges is a performance art project to make full-body prostrations across all 21 bridges connecting Manhattan to New York City's other boroughs (while on magic mushrooms).
Full-body prostrations are a form of ritualized phenomenology that entails both mind and body through visualization, mantra recitation, and physical action. It is a common form of religious practice in Tibet and India where practitioners will traditionally make a public pilgrimage to sacred sites by the power of physical prostration alone. Such endeavors can take several months, if not years, to complete.
The word "bardo" is Tibetan for "in-between" and appears in the title of what is popularly known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead (bar do thos grol), a Buddhist manual for navigating the purgatorial realm that lies in between one’s death and subsequent rebirth. Traditionally it is read to the dying with the hope that it will provide not just solace, but critical information on how to gain lucid awareness within the bardo.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead was famously adapted by Drs. Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert as a manual for navigating the bardo of “the psychedelic experience.” These early psychonauts recognized a common subjective experience in the Buddhist descriptions of dying and their own experiments with psychedelics. In both cases, a successful outcome depended on the practitioner’s ability to enter a liminal state of consciousness (i.e. bardo) without fear.
The idea of “bardo” can be extended to include spaces beyond just the one in between life and death. Bridges are a kind of bardo in that they occupy a physical and conceptual space between one's origin and destination. Like 21 Taras in Tibetan Buddhism, Manhattan has 21 bridges connecting it to the rest of the city. I have chosen to prostrate them as an expression of dharma art in the tradition of Buddhist-inspired artists like Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Yoko Ono, and John Cage.
You can help support BARDO BRIDGES 21 by becoming a member of Psychedelic Sangha and donating to our organization.
