Heaven, Here and Now: Immanence Across the World’s Wisdom Traditions
Introduction: Immanence and the Human–Earth Bond
Across cultures and centuries, the intuition that “heaven” is not a distant realm but a mode of presence already woven into the world recurs in varied idioms. This claim is not simply mystical ornament: it bears directly on how human beings relate to the land, waters, animals, and cycles of growth and decay. When heaven is imagined as deferred, ecological relation is often diminished. When heaven is seen as immanent, the natural world becomes the locus of reverence, ritual, and restraint.
Comparative philosophy of religion suggests that many societies never made a strict split between sacred and mundane. Instead, they wove human life into the fabric of rivers, forests, mountains, winds, and stars. “Heaven” here is less a place than a perception: an unveiling of the sacred that abides when humans live with attunement.
This study considers Vedic/Upaniṣadic Hinduism, Daoism, Zen Buddhism, Sufism, Christian mysticism, Indigenous North American lifeways, and Arctic–Siberian shamanisms, with attention to their articulation of immanence and the ecological ethic that follows. The aim is not to homogenize doctrines but to highlight convergences in their ecological grammars.
1. Vedic and Upaniṣadic Hinduism: The World as Woven into the Self
Sacred Rivers and Cosmic Pervasion
The Vedic tradition locates holiness in dawns, storms, and sacrificial fire. The Upaniṣads interiorize these cosmic forces, teaching that self (ātman) and ultimate reality (brahman) are one. This interiorization never erased ecological orientation: rivers, groves, and animals remained sites of holiness.
The Īśā Upaniṣad proclaims:
ईशावास्यमिदं सर्वं यत्किञ्च जगत्यां जगत्।
īśā vāsyam idaṁ sarvaṁ yat kiñca jagatyāṁ jagat
“All this, whatever moves in the world, is pervaded by the Lord.”¹
The Chāndogya Upaniṣad echoes:
सर्वं खल्विदं ब्रह्म।
sarvaṁ khalvidaṁ brahma
“All this, verily, is Brahman.”²
The ecological implication is clear: to pollute rivers like Gaṅgā or desecrate groves is not merely pragmatic harm but a rupture of cosmic order.
Forest Life and Agricultural Symbolism
Cycles of forest renunciation and settled agriculture shaped religious practice. The vanaprastha (“forest stage”) involved dwelling in groves to cultivate detachment and reverence for nonhuman rhythms. Agricultural metaphors suffuse the texts: realization is harvest, wisdom is rain, the self is seed.³ Heaven on earth appears when human beings cultivate land and spirit together, aligning with ṛta (cosmic order).
Human–Earth Reciprocity
Ethically, this immanent vision required humans to live non-violently (ahiṁsā) toward animals and respectfully toward plants. Seasonal festivals such as the Aśvamedha (horse sacrifice) or agrarian rites symbolized cosmic-human reciprocity. To give back—through offerings, chants, restraint—was to participate in heaven’s ongoing pervasion.
2. Daoism: Accord with the Self-So of the Ten Thousand Beings
The Dao as Earth’s Own Way
Daoist cosmology frames heaven and earth as partners. The Daodejing declares:
人法地，地法天，天法道，道法自然。
“Humans follow the earth; earth follows heaven; heaven follows the Dao; the Dao follows what is natural.”⁴
This hierarchy situates humanity as imitator of earth’s rhythms. Heaven on earth is realized when human conduct aligns with soil, river, and sky.
Sacred Mountains and Seasonal Rhythms
Mountains (shan 山) are revered as sources of vitality. Pilgrimage to the Five Sacred Peaks aligned devotees with cosmic order. Daoist ritual calendars marked solstices, equinoxes, and harvests, synchronizing human life with celestial and terrestrial cycles. Agriculture itself was cosmological: sowing and reaping were accompanied by chants to local deities.
Wuwei and Ecological Restraint
The ethic of wuwei (non-forcing) implied ecological humility. The Zhuangzi narrates the woodcarver who fasted until his mind was still, cutting only what the tree’s form offered.⁵ By refraining from coercion, humans sustain rather than deplete. Heaven is disclosed in the seamless accord between action and the self-so (ziran 自然) of things.
3. Zen Buddhism: Ordinary Mind and the World as Teacher
Suchness and the Ordinary
Zen insists enlightenment is not elsewhere but in clear seeing of suchness (tathatā). The Sixth Patriarch’s verse reads:
本來無一物，何處惹塵埃。
běnlái wú yī wù, hé chù rě chén āi
“Originally there is not a single thing; where could any dust alight?”⁶
Thus heaven is unveiled in ordinariness when the dust of grasping falls away.
Monastic Agriculture and Work Practice
Zen monasteries integrated agriculture and gardening into practice. Dōgen’s Instructions for the Cook (Tenzo Kyōkun) taught that preparing rice attentively was equal to meditation.⁷ Rice planting, tea cultivation, and field labor were sacralized. The earth became not backdrop but partner in practice.
Nature as Preacher
Dōgen’s Mountains and Waters Sutra affirms:
山川草木悉皆成仏。
“Mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood.”⁸
The more-than-human world is not inert matter but Dharma-preacher. Humans awaken alongside streams and stones; heaven on earth is shared realization.
4. Sufism: The World as Mirror of the Divine
Nearness and Theophany
The Qurʾān states:
وَنَحْنُ أَقْرَبُ إِلَيْهِ مِنْ حَبْلِ الْوَرِيدِ
“We are nearer to him than his jugular vein.” (Q 50:16)⁹
Sufi metaphysics interprets beings as theophanies (tajallī) of divine Names. Ibn ʿArabī described creation as the “Breath of the All-Merciful,” ceaselessly renewing.¹⁰
Gardens, Rivers, and Animals
Sufi poetry abounds in gardens, nightingales, and rivers. Rūmī’s reed flute sings separation and longing; Saʿdī writes of roses and thorns as mirrors of divine beauty.¹¹ To injure earth is to harm divine disclosure. Heaven is encountered when the heart, polished by dhikr, perceives every creature as a facet of the Real.
5. Christian Mysticism: Creation as Sacrament
Viriditas and the Greening World
Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) spoke of viriditas, the divine greening force:
Omnia virent radiante vita.
“All things are verdant with radiant life.”¹²
Plants, stones, and waters bore witness to God’s vitality.
Franciscan Kinship
Francis of Assisi praised “Brother Sun,” “Sister Moon,” and “Mother Earth.”¹³ Kinship language placed humans within creation, not above it. Poverty was ecological humility: to live lightly so as to honor creation’s sacredness.
Theosis and Light in the East
Byzantine theology taught theosis—participation in divine life. Symeon the New Theologian saw uncreated light shining through the heart and world.¹⁴ Creation itself became luminous when perceived with purified vision. Heaven was not postponed but transfigured earth.
6. Indigenous North American Lifeways: Relatives in the Web of Life
Kinship Ontology
The Lakota prayer Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ—“all my relatives”—encapsulates a kincentric worldview.¹⁵ Humans, animals, and plants are relatives bound by reciprocity.
Agriculture and Ceremony
Haudenosaunee agriculture centered on the “Three Sisters”—corn, beans, squash—understood as sibling plants who nourished each other and humanity. Councils opened with the Thanksgiving Address, ritually thanking waters, plants, winds, and stars.¹⁶
Hunting Protocols
Animals were addressed as persons. Offerings of tobacco or song repaid their gift of life. Failure to respect protocols risked imbalance and scarcity. Heaven was enacted through gratitude and restraint in fields and forests.
7. Arctic–Siberian Shamanisms: Multi-Layered but Interwoven Worlds
Place Spirits and Animal Intermediaries
Cosmologies in Siberia envision upper, middle, and lower worlds, interpenetrating through spirits of groves, rivers, and animals. Shamans mediate these relationships for healing.
Among the Eveny, reindeer herders offered to river spirits before crossings.¹⁷ Among the Sakha, benevolent Aiyy deities ensured fertility; neglect of ritual risked misfortune.¹⁸
Seasonal Cycles
The shaman’s flight was not escape but restoration of balance. By traversing cosmic layers, shamans renewed relationships among humans, animals, and place-beings. Heaven was experienced in landscapes densely inhabited by kin.
8. Comparative Motifs: Ecological Grammars of Immanence
Immanence. The sacred inheres in rivers, mountains, trees, and animals.
Perception-Shift. Heaven is unveiled by contemplative stillness, remembrance, or ritual thanksgiving.
Reciprocity. Humans live by earth’s gifts; gratitude, offerings, and restraint repay the debt.
Ecological Restraint. Agriculture, hunting, and ceremonial economies prevent overuse.
Aesthetic Signs. Greenness, light, harmony, and song mark alignment with sacred order.
9. Conclusion: The Near Country
Traditions as varied as the Upaniṣads, Daoism, Zen, Sufism, Christian mysticism, Indigenous ceremonies, and Siberian shamanisms converge: the sacred is not deferred to a distant heaven but woven into earth. Humans encounter heaven when they recognize themselves as kin within the living web.
To harm rivers, forests, or animals is to dim heaven’s light. To honor them is to let earth itself become luminous as paradise. “Heaven on earth” is not metaphor but vocation: to remember our place in the circle of relations and to walk in gratitude within the near country of the sacred world.
Endnotes
Īśā Upaniṣad 1; Patrick Olivelle, trans., The Early Upaniṣads (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 381–83.
Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.14.1; Olivelle, The Early Upaniṣads, 147–48.
Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.2.5; Olivelle, The Early Upaniṣads, 269–70.
Daodejing 25; Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005), 171–72.
Zhuangzi 19 (“Mastering Life”); Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 211–12.
Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch; Philip B. Yampolsky, trans., The Platform Sutra (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 132–33.
Dōgen, Tenzo Kyōkun (Instructions for the Cook); Kazuaki Tanahashi, trans., Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō (Boston: Shambhala, 2010), 789–97.
Dōgen, “Sansuikyō” (Mountains and Waters Sutra); Tanahashi, Shōbōgenzō, 137–44.
Qurʾān 50:16; M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, trans., The Qur’an (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 321.
Ibn ʿArabī, selections in William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 110–15.
Saʿdī of Shiraz, Būstān, trans. G. M. Wickens (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 33–35.
Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, II.3; Barbara Newman, trans., Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 152–60.
Francis of Assisi, “Canticle of the Creatures,” in Regis J. Armstrong et al., trans., Francis and Clare: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 37–39.
Symeon the New Theologian, Hymns of Divine Love; George A. Maloney, trans., Hymns of Divine Love (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1975), Hymn 25.
Vine Deloria Jr., God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2003), 67–72.
John Mohawk and Oren Lyons, eds., Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution (Santa Fe: Clear Light, 1992), 173–80.
Piers Vitebsky, The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 77–108.
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Shamanism: Soviet Studies of Traditional Religion in Siberia and Central Asia (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 93–112.