中文裡的「天」一般譯為「heaven」，在理解中國宗教時會產生問題。在西方國家裡，「heaven」有太多的意含，因而無法準確而安全地傳達其意義。對孔子而言，在西方世界一般理解的地方，是找不到天的。在儒家的脈絡裡，甚至是在道家，天（Tian）是在人類社會行為所顯露的內在模式裡，這些模式不斷地表現為行動的外顯模式。對於孔子的社會體系觀念的延續、持存和紹述而言不合理的改變，會污染該體系，使得它的道統遭到破壞，而淪於毀滅性的改變、消滅和新秩序的興起的螺旋循環當中。追求單一的、確定的秩序，是利用「禮」在生成歷程中的自然透顯，在適當的時機，會為了它的（以及社會有機體的）健康和存續而突變。最後，禮的存續端視於它的交互作用的細胞以及長養的人類的持續生命，而人類的永續生命則取決於「禮」的開展。這個生物學的類比很有助益，因為生物家都會注意他們周遭的直接事物，而中國哲學家，尤其是孔子和道家，都很強調在人類互動裡的自然性，在「人我之際」裡的自我，作為在眼前的環境裡自我定位的要件。。天人合一的這個面向，以及日常生活異滅的神聖性，是這篇論文所要探討的。

The word in Chinese translated typically as heaven is a problematic one for understanding Chinese religiosity. In the West, the word heaven has far too many connotations to allow this to be an accurate and safe rendering. For Confucius, heaven is to be found elsewhere from where it is typically conceived of in the West. In the Confucian context and with qualification in the Daoist one as well, Tian is to be found in the emerging immanent patterns of human social behavior that are continually presenting themselves in emergent patterns of behavior. Changes that are not reasonable for the continuance, sustainability, and subsequent growth in Confucius' idea of a social system will pollute the system and subsequently cause its orderly flow of information to be disrupted sending it into the spiral of destructive change, extinction, and the emergence of a new order. This commitment to a single, definite order is an appropriation of the emergent spontaneity that is immanent in the process of the li's becoming, which will mutate at the proper time for its-and the social organism's-health and survival. Ultimately, the survival of li is dependent on the continued life of its interacting cells, of cultured human beings, and the continuous life of human beings depends on the progression of li. The biological analogies are helpful because biologists necessarily focus their attention to what is around them, to what is immediate, and Chinese philosophers, especially Confucius and all the Daoists schools, have a profound sensitivity to the naturalness of human interaction, of finding ourselves in the ＂between-ness with others＂ as being constitutive of who and what we are in our contexts at hand. This aspect of the union of the human and heaven and the divinity of the everydayness of life and death is what this paper explores.