Listening to one hand clapping

Last summer Chen Lu-chun (陳律君), a junior at Chinese Culture University, did something her friends could never comprehend. For seven days, she dragged herself out of bed at five in the morning to join 300 others as drowsy as she on a walking trail. Forbidden to talk with each other, this silent procession walked barefoot at a snail's pace in the chilling mountain mist for two hours. Only after sitting through a lecture that followed were they finally allowed to have breakfast at 8:30am.

First daunted by the stringent schedule and physical demands, Chen soon grew to love the Dharma Drum Mountain College Students' Zen Camp (法鼓山大專禪修營) held last summer vacation by the renowned Buddhist master Sheng Yen (聖嚴) at Keelung's Ling-chuan Temple (靈泉寺).

"The biggest draw was master Sheng Yen," said Chen, who had never studied Zen before attending the camp and only occasionally visited temples with her Buddhist mother.

Most of the other students had no knowledge of Zen practice either. "Very often, the sole reason that they joined the camp was out of curiosity," said master Guo Chun (果竣), who studied under Sheng Yen and was one of the seven instructors at the camp.

With school holidays starting this month, the most recent college student Zen camp began on Friday, with more camps scheduled for the end of next month.

The camps are expansions of the small-scale seven-day sitting meditation camps (禪七) which Sheng Yen has held biannually since 1992. Last year, around 1,200 college students took part in the new program which consisted of other activities as well. "Zen in the Outdoors" and "Zen in Motion" were introduced to interest young people.

At that time, the prevalence of suicides on campuses rose to alarming levels, according to Guo Chun. Master Sheng Yen felt an urgent need to pass Zen practice on to more people as a technique to help them rein in their "restless hearts."

The method proved so useful for Chen that she went to the next camp during winter vacation in Sanyi (三義), Taipei County. She will go on to be a volunteer worker at one of the summer camps next month.

After the students arrived at the temple in Yuei Mei Mountain accompanied by their luggage-toting parents, they were soon told that talking would be forbidden for the duration of the camp.

Forach of the seven days after breakfast, these Zen freshmen crossed their legs on small rugs in the tall and spacious temple hall painted a warm yellow and brightly lit. The slight smell of incense wafted through the air. Four characters on the horizontal curtain above the alter read "the light of Buddha shines on every corner of the earth." An imposing statue of a cream-colored Buddha wearing a nonchalant expression looked on as the more than 300 students -- boys on one side and girls on the other -- all savored their first unforgettable experience of sitting meditation -- sore legs.

"It hurt! After 15 minutes, I just couldn't stand it anymore, some people held on for only 10 minutes before they had excruciating pain in their legs," Chen said.

Monks instruct students in yoga and massage to help ease their discomfort between meditation sessions. The length of these increase gradually from 20 minutes up to 50 minutes, but mostly depends on the students' ability. Monks sitting among them oversee this silent crowd and, from time to time, use a bamboo rod to correct their posture or stop them from dosing off. When the lead instructor sees students squirming in discomfort, he will knock on a piece of bamboo to dismiss the session.