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Ching Hai (清海)

Supreme Master Ching Hai
Born Hue Dang Trinh[1]
12 May 1950 (1950-05-12) (age 59)
Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam
Residence Taiwan
Known for Founder of Quan Yin Method

Supreme Master Ching Hai, or Suma Ching Hai ("Suma" is an abbreviation of the said title), (born May 12, 1950) is the self titled founder and spiritual teacher of the Quan Yin Method with an estimated 20,000 followers world wide.[2] She is also an entrepreneur who heads Suma Ching Hai International, an international group with business interests in restaurants, fashion and jewellery design; she is a poet, painter, musician, and self published writer.[3][4] She is known for her philanthropic and humanitarian work.[5]

Contents

Biography

The San Francisco Weekly cites 1995 research by a Berkeley graduate student in journalism which says she was born Hue Dang Trinh to a Vietnamese mother and an ethnic Chinese father, on May 12, 1950 in a small village in the Quang Ngai Province in Vietnam.[6] Trinh worked as a Red Cross interpreter in Europe and developed a relationship with a German scientist and doctor who was a relief worker.[2][7] They married, but separated after two years, when she left him to pursue spiritual enlightenment.[6] In 1979, she met a Buddhist monk in Germany whom she followed for three years, but she was denied entry to his monastery on the basis of gender.[7] She immigrated to India to study different religions, and became a disciple of Thakar Singh.[6] During her stay at his ashram, she learned his 'Light and Sound' meditation technique,[7] from which her Quan Yin Method is derived.

According to an account by Patricia Thornton, Ching Hai's recognition as a spiritual leader came suddenly in 1982, when she tried to buy a copy of the Hindu sacred work the Bhagavad-Gita from a small shop along the Ganges. The shopkeepers denied having copies, but she insisted she had seen it there. An extensive search uncovered a copy hidden in a sealed box; word quickly spread that Ching Hai had an "unusually well-developed third eye."[8]

In 1983, she followed a Vietnamese Buddhist monk in Taiwan named Jing-Xing. Unaware of her prior connection to Singh, Jing-Xing ordained her in 1984 "Thanh Hai" – translated in Mandarin as Ching Hai, which means "pure ocean".[7] In 1986, she founded the Immeasurable Light Meditation.

According to her official biography, Ching Hai is the daughter of a naturopath, she was born to a well-off family in a town north of Hanoi in Vietnam and brought up as a Roman Catholic, learning the basics of Buddhism from her grandmother. The official biography states that she was given a divine transmission of the inner Light and Sound by a true Master in the Himalayas which she renamed the Quan Yin Method.[9]

No initiation or membership fees are collected from disciples, but the bulk of her financial support comes from Taiwan,[6] where her following is the strongest; her followers in the US are predominantly new immigrants from China and Vietnam.[7] Her Supreme Master Meditation Centers, incorporated in Los Angeles and San Jose and several US states, benefit from tax-exempt status as religious organizations.[6] Ching Hai is described by Rafer Guzmán of Metroactive as a "tireless publicity seeker". By her own admission, she presides over a "rather big organisation" with "a lot of centers around the world--40 or 50 countries" which includes restaurants, and sells jewellery and clothes designed by her.[7]

International profile

On October 25, 1993 the Mayor of Honolulu Frank F. Fasi proclaimed the day as "Supreme Master Ching Hai Day" and awarded her Honorary Citizenship of Honolulu and an International Peace Commendation[citation needed]. On February 22, 1994 she was awarded commendations from representatives of six US State Governors for contributions to various disaster relief funds as well as a World Spiritual Leadership Award from the World Cultural Communication Association[citation needed]. Ching Hai asks her followers to specifically acknowledge these two days each year, both referred to as Ching Hai Day. [10]

While she, or her organisation have made donations to various humanitarian causes, she is not without controversy: she claims that seven United States governors proclaimed 22 February 1994, as "Supreme Master Ching Hai Day", yet some of the awards she says were bestowed upon her may have been fraudulent or obtained under false pretences: in 1993, $200,000 which she promised to a relief organisation after the Southern Californian fires reportedly never arrived.[7] Metroactive reported that it was alleged in Taiwan that Ching Hai even set up two front organisations to make awards to her, and manipulated a United States official into posing as the president of one in a public ceremony. However, then governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad, appears to have honoured her in recognition of her $65,000 donation to relief efforts for victims of the 1993 Mississippi River flooding.[7]

Ching Hai was awarded the Gusi Peace Prize in 2006 in Manila, Philippines for her work in Philanthropy and Humanitarianism. [11]

In 1994 the local government in Vinh Long Province, Vietnam issued a declaration classifying Ching Hai's operations as "religious propaganda" intended to "illegally oppose the government." Actions were launched to curtail further activities by her organisation.[12] Former UC Berkeley Professor, Margaret Singer, said it appeared to be "one of the most well-organized and fastest-growing cults in the United States and the world."[6]

In an attempt to build political support abroad, Ching Hai asked her followers to contribute money to the Clinton Presidential Legal Expense Trust in 1996.[13] Through Charlie Trie, who had been initiated as a follower, the sum of US$880,000 was raised. However, the donations were returned when the fund found irregularities with the donation which involved identical signatures, consecutively ordered money orders, and listed donors who did not have the financial means. The year-long scandal had a negative effect on the Qing Hai, and further damaged perception of the Clinton administration.[14] The Taiwan government also investigated her organization for "alleged fund-raising improprieties," which includes a $2 million transfer outside of the country.[3]

Rather than the intended "boomerang" of international support for her efforts, the activities resulted in an extensive investigation and a congressional subpoena, as well as a rash of negative press about the Supreme Master and her fiscal dealings.[15] Ching Hai was jeered in the Western press as the "Immaterial Girl: Part Buddha, Part Madonna," for her flamboyant dress, and the "Buddhist Martha Stewart ... [a] merchandizing mystic from Taiwan."

Quan Yin

The term Quan Yin Method (also Guan Yin Method) was coined in 1985 by Ching Hai, to describe the type of meditation that she practices and teaches. The spelling is an idiosyncratic romanisation of a Chinese term said to be in English translation: "contemplation of the sound vibration".[citation needed] It is markedly similar to the much older Surat Shabd Yoga from the Sant Mat tradition which also teaches meditation on the light and sound.

Ching Hai has said, "It’s not that I invented the Quan Yin Method; I just know it. This method has existed since the beginning of time, when the universe was first formed. And it will always exist. It is not a method; it is like the way of the universe, a universal law that we must follow if we want to get back to the Origin, back to our true Self, back to the Kingdom of God or our Buddha nature."[16] In the book The Key of Immediate Enlightenment, it is said that those who recite her name would become elevated.[17]

Ching Hai initiates spiritual aspirants into the Quan Yin Method, which is purported to exist in various religions under different names, as the "best, easiest, and quickest" way to get enlightenment.[18][19] The method involves meditation on the "inner light and the inner sound of God", or the Shabd that she claims is also referred to in the Bible and said to be acknowledged repeatedly in the literature of all the world's major spiritual traditions. Ching Hai accepts people from all backgrounds and religious affiliations for initiation. One does not have to change one's present religion or system of beliefs.[6] Neophytes to the Ching Hai way may cease eating animal products gradually in what is termed the "Convenient Method." The practice involves half an hour of meditation a day and adherence to a vegetarian diet for a minimum of ten days per month.[6] The Quan Yin Method requires two and a half hours of meditation per day and adherence to five precepts borrowed from the Five Precepts of Buddhism:

  • Refrain from taking the life of sentient beings. This precept requires strict adherence to a vegan or lacto-vegetarian diet. No meat, fish, poultry or eggs (fertilized or nonfertilized).
  • Refrain from speaking what is not true.
  • Refrain from taking what is not offered.
  • Refrain from sexual misconduct.
  • Refrain from the use of intoxicants. This includes avoiding all poisons of any kind, such as alcohol, drugs, tobacco, gambling, pornography, and excessively violent films or literature.

As part of their meditation routine, followers of Ching Hai partially cover their heads under a sheet of cloth or blanket while meditating. However, while meditating away from the view of uninitiated people, the meditators do not necessarily use this cloth to cover their heads completely.

Quan Yin in China

Quan Yin was introduced on the Chinese mainland in 1992, where it is commonly known as "Guanyin Famen." It spread without notice for several years, but in July 1996, two years before the onset of a campaign to stamp out "heretical sects," authorities in Sichuan found a list of several thousand practitioners of the method in seven different province; it included many Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, and some high-ranking cadres.[20]

The authorities asserted that the organization's beliefs and activities were fundamentally "anticommunist", and it was labelled a "reactionary religious organization."[21] At the time of the ban against "heterodox religions" was put into law in July 1999, Guanyin Famen/Quan Yin claimed an estimated 500,000 followers in 20 provinces and cities.[20]

In January 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 Guanyin Famen/Quan Yin.[20] The enterprise allegedly supported 30 Quan Yin 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."[20]

Supreme Master Ching Hai International

Supreme Master Ching Hai International is the corporate entity behind Guanyin Famen/Quan Yin. It is affiliated with World Peace Media, Oceans of Love Entertainment, Supreme Master Television, and several cable television series, all groups and businesses established by Ching Hai. Her organisation runs a string of vegetarian restaurants around the world, some of which sell her merchandise. She launched an expensive clothing line in New York and Paris in 1995; her "Elevation of the Soul" is a catalogue of 50 books, including a Supreme Master cookbook, more than 400 videos of public appearances by "the Supreme Master" which includes an $8 video of "Funny Non-Saint Stories" taped in Los Angeles, to footage of "Master's Birthday Celebration" in Taiwan for $64. San Francisco Weekly said: "Some of the videos have the ring of a Zen koan -- 'To Do Without Doing' -- while others are as unambiguous as 'A Message From God.' There are even [lip-synched] pop music videos..."[6]

According to political scientist Patricia M. 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."[22]

In late 2008 Ching Hai launched a media campaign in Australia and New Zealand asking people to "Be Green, Go Veg, Save the Planet". Vegetarianism, clean energy, and tree planting were promoted as a solution to climate change and pollution. The Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association also made submissions to the Garnaut Climate Change Review advocating large cuts to livestock production.

Much of the media produced by Suma Ching Hai International is heavily self-referential and promotional, according to Thornton, and aims to "build a public record of recognition for group activities."[14] In 1998 the organization staged a concert for donating to several prominent children's foundations in the U.S., while highlights of the event were captured in a coffee-table book. Similar to the attempt of the Falun Gong to gain public legitimacy outside mainland China, Ching Hai has had local authorities in various countries declare particular dates "Supreme Master Ching Hai Day."[14]

The source of wealth behind the group's charitable efforts and its media empire is a mystery, according to Thornton. Like the Qigong organisations that came to the fore in China in the 1980s and 1990s, Suma Ching Hai International adopted the structure of a business enterprise early on.[14]

Operations

Ching Hai has opened vegetarian restaurants, held free public seminars, and has made millions of dollars as a painter, fashion designer, and jewelry designer. Her business activities have led some detractors to question her motives. Ching Hai has also been criticised because her disciples are reported to buy much of her artwork, which is seen as a de facto donation. One disciple is alleged to have bought a pair of used sweat socks for $800 USD because "when the Master leaves the physical world, at least I will have her socks".[6] In 1997, she stated that she earned more than former U.S. President Bill Clinton's annual salary of $200,000.[13] Followers respond that much of the money she makes is used for helping the poor, providing necessities to refugees, and victims of environmental disasters.[23]

Ching Hai's group relies on the Internet to communicate, and is one key to its survival. Web sites are maintained in least 17 different languages, offering in-house news magazines, RealAudio and downloadable MP3 versions of radio broadcasts, and online WindowsMedia versions of Supreme Master television programs for those without access to cable stations.[20]

The main website of the group contains a prominent link to the "Celestial Shop," along with the Suma Hai Ching publishing company. Items available online include a line of "Celestial" apparel and jewelry designed by the Supreme Master, along with a range of other items that included, as of September 2006, "Supreme Kitchen Fortune Cookies: Food for the Soul," and a series of table lamps in six different designs (Enlightenment, Love, Vitality, Perfection, Heavenly Rain, and Cooling).[24]

Criticism

Dress

Her flamboyant dress sense has been criticised as unsuitable for a Buddhist monk or nun. In October 1995 on Ching Hai Day, she wore queenly robes "under orders from God," riding a sedan chair carried by eight bearers to the cheers of "your royal majesty".[3] In her lectures, Ching Hai explains that her way of dress is a statement to prove that one does not need to dress as a nun or monk to achieve enlightenment through her Quan Yin Method.

Environmental violations

In 2004, an artificial island and 330 foot long boardwalk created in the Biscayne National Park cost $1 million USD to remove after being illegally constructed by Ching Hai, known locally as a wealthy property owner under the pseudonym Celestia De Lamour.[25] 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.[26]

See also

References

  1. ^
    In this Vietnamese name, the family name is Trịnh. According to Vietnamese custom, this person should properly be referred to by the given name Hue Dang.
  2. ^ a b Partridge, Christopher (2004) New Religions: A Guide, Oxford University Press, p. 264
  3. ^ a b c Chua-Eoan, Howard (1997-01-20). "The Buddhist Martha". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985800,00.html. 
  4. ^ Hackman, Nichollas (1998-12-13). "The Peace Seeker". Los Angeles Times. 
  5. ^ Maragay, Fel V. (2006-11-20). "Master of charity". Manila Standard Today. http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=felMaragay_nov20_2006. 
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Young, Gordon (1996-05-22). "God Inc.". SF Weekly. http://www.sfweekly.com/1996-05-22/news/god-inc/. 
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h Guzmán, Rafer (1996-03-28). "Immaterial Girl". Metro. http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/03.28.96/suma-9613.html. 
  8. ^ Thornton (2008), p. 189
  9. ^ Supreme Master Ching Hai (March 2009). "God's Direct Contact". Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association. http://godsdirectcontact.us/bio.html. 
  10. ^ "About Ching Hai Day". http://www.godsdirectcontact.com/chinghaiday/chinghaiday.html. Retrieved 2009-07-16. 
  11. ^ "PGMA confers 2006 Gusi Peace Prize to 15 great achievers of the world". Gov.Ph : The Official Government Portal of the Republic of the Philippines. 23 November 2006. http://www.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5394&Itemid=2. Retrieved 2009-06-11. 
  12. ^ PEOPLE'S COMMITTEE VINH LONG PROVINCE (1994-08-08). "Prevent operation of the reactionary Supreme Master Ching Hai Thanh". http://qppl.vinhlong.gov.vn/LinkClick.aspx?link=VanBan%2f1994%2f24.rtf&tabid=299&mid=720. Retrieved 2009-07-16. 
  13. ^ a b Jackson, Brooks; John Gilmore (1997-01-09). "Religious Leader Felt Sorry For Clinton". CNN's Inside Politics (CNN). http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/09/ching.hai/. 
  14. ^ a b c d Thornton (2008), p. 191
  15. ^ Thornton (2008), p. 192
  16. ^ Supreme Master Ching Hai (1998-12-17). "Master's Words: The Quan Yin Method is an Eternal Universal Law". Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association Publishing Co Ltd. http://godsdirectcontact.us/sm21/enews/www/178/mt_0.htm. 
  17. ^ Chan, Charmaine (1999-01-03). "Cult branches spread worldwide". South China Morning Post: p. 7. 
  18. ^ "Soundless Sound - The Tone That Fills The Cosmos". Yoga International Magazine Issue 36. July, 1997. http://godsdirectcontact.us/sm21/enews/www/084/i-01.htm. 
  19. ^ Supreme Master Ching Hai (1999-11-28). "Quan Yin Method is the Easiest Way to God". Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association Publishing Co Ltd. http://godsdirectcontact.com/quanyin/htm/110/e110.htm. 
  20. ^ a b c d e Thornton (2008), p. 190
  21. ^ Thornton, Patricia M. (2008) Manufacturing Dissent in Transnational China pp. 179-204 in "Popular Protest in China," Kevin J. O'Brien (ed.), Harvard University Press, p. 190
  22. ^ Thornton, Patricia M. (2008) Manufacturing Dissent in Transnational China pp. 179-204 in "Popular Protest in China," Kevin J. O'Brien (ed.), Harvard University Press
  23. ^ Humanitarian Relief Activities
  24. ^ Thornton (2008), p. 192
  25. ^ "Park service to eliminate island". The Washington Times. 2004-03-16. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/mar/16/20040316-115047-8380r/?page=4. 
  26. ^ Morgan, Curtis (2004-03-24). "Park removes access to illegal bay island". The Miami Herald. http://www.rickross.com/reference/ching_hai/sumaching12.html. 

External links

Official websites








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