Friday ramble - Immanence/Immanent

When something is immanent, it is everywhere, inherent, pervading or present throughout the universe and not separated from planes of existence.  In religious doctrine, immanence is the belief that the sacred dwells beyond us and at the same time is intimately present within us and everything around us.  Thus, there is contrast with conventional notions of transcendence in which the sacred dwells beyond, but is not part of this world in which we are journeying along together.

I like the words of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus who said, and a very long time ago: "We all look up to the same stars; the same heaven is above us all; the same universe surrounds us all.  What does it matter by what system of knowledge we seek to know the truth? Not by one path alone may we attain to so great a secret.”

Does immanence matter?  To me, it does, and I suspect it does to anyone who cares about her/his fellow creatures and this planet.  The hallowed stuff is above us, around us and within us, in these creaking old bones of mine, in winter sunrises and flaming sunsets, brilliant blue days and starry starry nights, the revolving seasons and the Great Round of time, the earth under our feet, the branches and good green leaves over our heads (hopefully some day soon), even snow. It seems to be what most of my wandering around with the camera is about, however badly captured or expressed here - seeing, tasting and honoring the incandescent spark that dwells at the heart of everything.

My puckish Zen side feels compelled to add that mere existence is never an issue, a parameter or a condition of immanence.  No doubt, the immanent dwells as happily within things that don't exist as it does within things that do. The concept of non-duality and the expression "all one world" cover things nicely. I needed a reminder of all that "stuph" this morning, and there it was in the rising sun shining though the frost on a eastern facing window in the garden shed.  Emaho!