One of nature’s odder creatures is the firefly,
a soft bodied beetle that emits a warm yellow
glow from its lower abdomen, typically at
twilight, in order to attract mates or prey.
Though relatively rare in Europe and North
America, the firefly is a common sight in
Japan, where it is known as the hotaru. Hotarus
are at their most plentiful in June and July,
and can be seen in groups around rivers and
lakes. The glittering light of the hotaru
is deemed to be so enchanting, the Japanese
hold firefly festivals – or hotaru matsuri
- to watch their dance.
Something even odder has happened to the firefly
in Japan: it has become philosophical. Zen
Buddhist poets and philosophers (the two terms
are largely interchangeable in Japan) have
over the centuries noted the affinity between
the firefly and a central concept in Zen:
the brevity of life. Zen does not think of
our transience as tragic, rather it is by
accommodating ourselves gracefully to our
own evanescence that we can reach enlightenment
and harmony with nature’s necessities.
For Zen, the firefly is the perfect symbol
of transience positively interpreted: its
season is very brief, it lights up only in
high summer, and its light is intermittent
and flickering. Fireflies are both fragile
- and astonishingly beautiful when seen in
large numbers in a pine forest or a meadow
at night. They are a metaphor for our own
poignant lives.
The move of locating important philosophical
themes in the natural world is one that Zen
makes again and again, for example, in relation
to bamboo (evocative of resilience), water
(a symbol of patient strength, capable of
wearing down stone) and cherry blossom (an
emblem of modest rapture). Zen repeatedly
hangs its ideology onto things that could
seem at first very minor, because it wants
to make use of what is most ordinarily in
our sight to keep us tethered to its grand
bathetic truths.
The great seventeenth century poet Matsuo
Basho, pushes aside our day to day vanity
and egoistic ambitions in the hope that we
might become, via his focus on a small short-lived
creature, appropriately attentive to our own
finitude.
Falling from
A blade of grass, to fly off –
A firefly.
For Zen Buddhism, the firefly is the ideal
carrier – on its slender wings – of reminders
of the need for dignified resignation in the
face of the mightiness and mystery of the
natural order. Koyabashi Issa, an 18th century
Buddhist priest as well as haiku master, wrote
230 poems on fireflies. In one of the most
celebrated of these, he captures a moment
where time is momentarily stilled, so that
its passage can more viscerally be felt:
The fireflies are sparkling
And even the mouth of a frog
Hangs wide open
It’s a tiny moment of satori or enlightenment;
the frog is as wonderstruck as the poet at
the piercing light of the brave doomed fireflies
- much as we should fairly be amazed, frightened,
grateful and ultimately joyous to have been
allocated a few brief moments in which to
behold and try to make sense of our own existence
in an always largely unfathomable 13.8 billion
year old universe.
