The Stone Garden: Meditations on History, Experience, and the Nature of the Mystical
Marie Huber
Stanford Humanities Center October 2, 2026 DOI: 10.82940/fcbc-zv27 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation Mystical experience |
| Key points | Argues that the Persian stone garden resists allegorical domestication and instead memorializes an individual passion and the ravages of history on a voiceless subject. Drawing on Michel de Certeau's account of mystic speech, the author contends that friction between social structures, institutions, and epistemological orders gives rise to visionary art that ruptures conventional frameworks of interpretation. |
Abstract
Gardens abound in the Persian poetic imaginary and have been the site of symbolic overdetermination for more than a thousand years. Unlike the classical gardens of (other)wordly desire, however, there is a garden that resists domestication to the allegorical order: the stone garden is no self-contained utopia onto which our own longing for shelter from hostile forces can be projected. Instead, it stands as a sacrificial dance frozen in time, memento to an individual passion and the ravages wrought by history on a subject without voice. The present paper offers a modus legendi of both the stone garden itself and the film it inspired. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s insights on the nature of mystic speech, I seek to unfold the relationship between the individual mystical experience and the sociopolitical outside that constitutes the other origin of the garden. It is the friction created by the passage of different social structures, institutions, and, ultimately, epistemological orders that gives rise, I argue, to a work of visionary art which ruptures conventional frameworks of interpretation.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |