As for practitioners of "instant" Chan, the writer Hsiao Yeh once wrote in an article entitled Cicada and Chan: "There is a kind of cicada called the 'Seventeen-year Chan' the pupa of which must stay in darkness underground for seventeen years, after which it crawls to the surface to slowly climb a tree trunk before it finally hatches out into a winged insect ...
對於這樣抱著「速成」心態的修禪者，作家小野在一篇「蟬與禪」的文章中表示，有一種蟬叫十七年蟬，幼蟲要在黑暗地底下十七年，才爬出地面，沿著樹幹緩緩爬行，最後羽化成有翅膀的成蟲。