Ching Hai

Biography

Ching Hai was born to a Vietnamese mother and a Chinese father, on 12 May 1950 in a small village in the Quảng Ngãi Province in Vietnam. In 1969, she began a relationship with a German scientist. They married, but separated after two years to focus an spiritualism. In 1979, she met a Buddhist monk in Germany whom she followed for three years, but his monastery denied entry to females. She moved to India to study different religions.

Hai attempted to buy a copy of the Bhagavad Gita from a bookshop near the Ganges. Despite the shopkeepers' assertion that they had not got a copy, an extensive search revealed one in a sealed box. This led to rumours of her having a third eye circulating by 1982.. In 1983, she met a Vietnamese Buddhist monk in Taiwan named Jing-Xing, who ordained her in 1984 as "Thanh Hai", meaning "pure ocean".

According to her official biography, Ching Hai was born to a well-off naturopathic family in Âu Lạc, Hanoi, Vietnam. Though raised as a Roman Catholic, she learned the basics of Buddhism from her grandmother. A Himalayas spiritual teacher showed her a particular meditation method which she named Quan Yin method.

Her meditations centres in American cities such as Los Angeles benefit from tax-exempt status as religious organizations. She presides over an organization which owns restaurants and sells her jewellery and clothes.

Corporate operations

Hai founded the Loving Hut restaurant chains. with 138 restaurants worldwide in 2014.

She launched an clothing line in New York and Paris in 1995.

Hai has written a 50 books called "Elevation of the Soul" which include a cookbook, over 400 videos of her public appearances and an $8 video of "Funny Non-Saint Stories" taped in Los Angeles with footage of her birthday celebrations.

She has authored picture books, such as The Birds in My Life and The Noble Wilds. The books consist of photos she has taken.

Her organization hosts websites which offer digital downloads of her media in 17 languages as well as a "Celestial Shop" which sells apparel and jewelry designed by Hai.

Supreme Master Ching Hai International

Hai has founded organizations including the Supreme Master Ching Hai International, World Peace Media, Oceans of Love Entertainment and Supreme Master Television. Her organization runs an international vegetarian restaurants chain, some of which sell her merchandise.

In late 2008 Ching Hai launched a media campaign in Australia and New Zealand asking people to "Be Green, Go Veg, Save the Planet".

The Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association has made submissions to the Garnaut Climate Change Review, advocating large cuts to livestock production.

According to political scientist Patricia Thornton at the University of Oxford, the Ching Hai World Society's heavy reliance on the internet for text distribution, recruitment and information-sharing, marks the group as a transnational "cybersect."

The source of income behind Hai's numerous business ventures is unknown.

According to Thornton, much of the media produced by her television programmes is heavily self-referential and promotional and aims to "build a public record of recognition for group activities."

Quan Yin method

Hai first demonstrated the "Immeasurable Light Meditation Center and the Way of Sound Contemplation" or Quan Yin method of meditation in Miaoli, Taiwan. The method is very similar to the Surat Shabd Yoga method from the Sant Mat tradition.

Hai has said that she did not invent the Quan Yin method of meditation, but she merely "knows" it. In her book The Key of Immediate Enlightenment she claims that those who recite her name would become spiritually elevated.

The method involves meditation on the "inner light and the inner sound of God", or the Shabd. Hai claims that the Bible acknowledged the existence of this method and that it has been repeatedly re-used by most major religions. The Quan Yin Method requires two and a half hours of meditation per day and adherence to five precepts similar to the Five Precepts of Buddhism.

Quan Yin method in China

By 1996, several thousand residents of China were practitioners of the method.

The Chinese government claimed that the organization's beliefs and activities were fundamentally "anti-communist" and labelled the group a "reactionary religious organization" and a cult.

In 2002, the manager of the Wuhan Zhongzhi Electric Testing Equipment Company was accused by the Chinese authorities of using the business as a cover to "support heresies" associated with the Quan Yin method. The enterprise supported thirty practitioners who "masqueraded as employees and business associates." The manager was charged with using the company's offices and buildings as "retreat sites", organizing "initiations" and "screenings" to recruit members, and illegally printing and distributing more than 6,000 copies of heretical texts.

Controversies

The Taiwan government has investigated Hai's organization for "alleged fund-raising improprieties", which included a transfer of $2 million outside of the country.

Hai gave $640,000 to Bill Clinton's Presidential Legal Expenses Trust which it returned in 1996 because of "suspicious" funding sources.

In 2004, an artificial island and a 330-foot (100 m) long boardwalk created in Biscayne National Park cost $1 million USD to remove after being illegally constructed by Hai, known locally as a wealthy property owner under the pseudonym Celestia De Lamour. National Park workers replanted between 400 and 500 mangrove trees in the area once covered by the illegal boardwalk. The private property owned by Ching Hai adjacent to the national park was seized by police and later sold at auction to the village of Palmetto Bay, which planned to establish a park on the site.

Awards