The relatively rare in europe and north America.

The firefly is a common sight in japan, where it is known as the hotaru.

Hotaru is 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 matt suri 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 patients 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 on our site, to keep us tethered to its grand, pathetic truths.

The great 17th 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 fin itude 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 mighty nous and mystery of the natural order koybasi esa.

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 wonder struck 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.

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