| Summary: | Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-186). === The argument of this dissertation is that the garden can be considered a proleptic eschatological landscape outside of time. To prove this argument I pull together strands of philosophical reflections on death, history of religions analysis concerning sacred space and time and monastic spirituality. I develop this argument by focusing on the enclosed garden, which has connected with it, in myth and metaphor, abundant meanings concerning life after death in a paradisiacal state of bliss. These meanings also become evident in the physical layout of the garden, which, when analyzing it in terms of substantial and situational definitions of sacred space, becomes a prime example of a sacred space, linked physically and symbolically to an eschatological space. The enclosed garden plays a very important role in monastic spirituality as it is not only associated with the cloister, but also with the Virgin Mary, which both offer the monk a gateway to eternity in Paradise. Physically the enclosed garden becomes the very center of the monastic precinct, offering through a ritual-sensory experience of its spatial qualities an experience which allows the monk a moment of spiritual transcendence. It is also, thus, in this moment, when the monk’s physical experience of the garden is woven together with ideas of paradise as an abode of eternity, that the garden becomes a sacred space which can lift him outside of time to experience paradisiacal happiness. This requires a process of hermeneutical interpretation from the monk and the theorist reflecting on this encounter. It is a dialogue between the garden and its interpreters, which leads to the conclusion that an encounter with the sacred never stands in isolation.
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