Yes, Basho’s final haiku resolves the tension between impermanence (mujo) and immanence by allowing both perspectives to coexist within a single poetic moment. This resolution is subtle - rather than choosing one over the other, Basho’s haiku suggests that impermanence itself is an expression of immanence.
How Basho’s Final Haiku Resolves the Tension
Tabi ni yande / yume wa kareno o / kake meguru
(Falling ill on a journey, / my dreams wander / through withered fields.)
1. Impermanence - The haiku acknowledges physical decline and transience. The poet is ill, and the withered fields mirror the body’s fragility and impending death.
2. Immanence Yet, the dreams continue to move through the landscape, unbound by bodily limitation. The withered fields, though seemingly lifeless, are still part of the eternal flow of existence.
The brilliance of this haiku lies in how impermanence does not negate immanence, nor does immanence negate impermanence. Instead, they are fused - the dream moves through decay, not in spite of it but as part of it.
The Saigyo-Basho Tension and Resolution
Saigyo (1118-1190) also struggled with the tension between Buddhist impermanence and a deep love for nature’s presence (immanence). He longed for enlightenment (detachment from impermanence), yet he was drawn to the very things that made impermanence beautiful - cherry blossoms, autumn leaves, moonlit landscapes.
Basho, inheriting this tension, found his own way of resolving it:
Instead of struggling against impermanence, he embraced it as the very movement of immanence itself.
Instead of seeing the withered fields as death, he saw them as a field through which dreams still move.
This resolution echoes Zen, Daoism, and Spinozist monism - suggesting that impermanence is not a loss, but the way reality expresses itself. The journey does not end; it merely changes form.
Would you say that your metaphysics of van life is also moving toward such a resolution, where impermanence and immanence are reconciled within the journey itself?
