Ching Hai

In Eichman's own view, as infuriating as Hai's persona, her materialism and unsystematic religious synthesizing is to the Taiwanese Buddhist community and to others who have called her a cult leader, when we set aside her Buddhist roots and compare her work to that of an ever-changing array of self-made gurus, spiritual guides and newly formed religions that make up the New Age marketplace, it becomes evident that Ching Hai’s work is neither the most radical nor innovative. She states that the controversies swirling around Hai should not stop us from noting just how gutsy it was for her to strike out on her own, and with her unusual prominence as a female spiritual leader, Ching Hai in effect demonstrates her ability to compete in a spiritual arena dominated largely by men. And we should be open to the idea that not all female leaders will remain within the religious mainstream.

Hai first demonstrated the "Immeasurable Light Meditation Center and the Way of Sound Contemplation" or Quan Yin method of meditation in Miaoli, Taiwan. According to Hai "The method is transmitted without words... In fact, it isn't really a method. It's the power of the Master. If you have it, then you can transmit it. The Method is a transcendental one that cannot be described by our language. Even if someone describes it to you, you won't receive the Light and the vibration, the inner peace and Wisdom". Hai stated "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".

The method involves meditation on the "inner light and the inner sound" of God or the Buddha. 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 "Full Initiation" involves a life-long commitment to a vegan diet, adherence to the Five Precepts of Buddhism and at least two hours meditation daily. "Quick initiation" or "Convenient Method", requires a half hour’s meditation daily and abstinence from meat for ten days each month.

Hai founded the Loving Hut restaurant chains with 200 locations in 35 countries worldwide in 2017.

In 2017, Yahoo.com reported that Chuck McLean, Senior Research Fellow at GuideStar, reviewed the 990s of two of the largest American chapters of the group: Los Angeles, which reports over $1.2 million in assets-more than any other chapter in the US-and San Jose, the parent organization of more than a dozen chapters across the country. “Taking their Forms 990 at face value, it seems unlikely that anyone is enriching themselves financially through these organizations...I don’t know what the associated business interests are about, but it appears that they give almost all of their money to legitimate causes.”

In Prominent Nuns: Influential Taiwanese Voices (CrossCurrents 2011) , Religious studies Research associate Jennifer Eichman of the Centere of Buddhist Studies at SOAS University of London summarizes: While to some, Ching Hai's movement is considered Buddhist Heresy and to others a New Age religious organization. Accusations of being a Cult group have been made repeatedly over the years, especially in newspaper articles and by cult watchers. Ching Hai’s response to this accusation is that participants were free to leave at any time.

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

In 2004, an artificial island and a 330-foot (100 m) long boardwalk created in Biscayne National Park cost US$1 million to remove after being illegally constructed by workers at a property owned by Ching Hai, known locally as 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.

In 1999, attending and reviewing Immediate Enlightenment, Eternal Liberation seminar In Ireland, part of Ching Hai's 1999 European Lecture Tour, Dominican Order priest Louis Hughes, chairperson of Dialogue Ireland a Christian countercult ministry, wrote: "In a brief autobiography she [Hai] explains that her significant spiritual experience came about as a result of time spent in the Himalayas where she discovered ‘the Quan Yin Method and the Divine Transmission’. Nowhere in the movement’s literature is any mention made of how she came upon this enlightenment. Enquiring from one of her retinue as to who Ching Hai’s teacher was, yielded the vague reply. ‘Kutaji – he lives in a cave in the Himalayas – maybe has left his body now.’ Such reticence in regards to the identity of one’s initiating guru is quite unusual among Oriental religious teachers, and begs the question as to the true origins of Ching Hai’s teaching".

In an article titled The Master from the Himalayan Cloud published in Supreme Master Ching Hai News Magazine vol 79 (February 1997) . Hai's own record of her initiation into the Quan Yin Method and initiating Master when she eventually arrived in India are entailed:

Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster Christopher Partridge wrote that Ching Hai visited India and was initiated by Thakar Singh, a Runahi Satsang Sant Mat master. Investigator Terry Lenzner reported in the 1996 Committee on Governmental Affairs "Hue [Ching Hai] reportedly hid her association with Thakar Singh when she arrived in Taiwan in October 1983 because it would have prevented her from becoming fully ordained in the Buddhist order". Professor of philosophy David C. Lane, a controversial desciple of Charan Singh a Radha Soami Satsang Beas Sant Mat Master, stated in his 2017 essay Studying Cults, A Forty-Year Reflection that "Ching Hai, tried to deny for many years her close association with the notorious shabd yoga guru, Thakar Singh, since she didn’t want to be tainted by her former guru’s sexual exploits".

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 called the group a "reactionary religious organization". 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.

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

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

According to Ting Jen-Chieh (Ding Renjie), Assistant Research Fellow in the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, by the early 1990s Ching Hai was at war with the Buddhist establishment in Taiwan. Rather than submit to their demands, she severed all connections to Buddhist organizations, abandoned the traditional robe, grew out her hair, dressed fashionably, and set out to create her own independent group.

Korean Dahnhak Qigong expert Kim Tae-young, author of the popular Leading Experience guidebooks (in Korean) - published in 102 volumes since 1990, has written in Leading Experience vol 37 (1997) that Quan Chi (concentrating on Chi) and Quan Nian, (observing conceptions) are more familiar terms than the term Quan Yin (observation of the inner vibration). Kim at that time; an initiate of Hai's "Convenient Method" explains "Quan Yin signifies the practice of observing sound in the literal sense. It is not the crude vibratory sound of matter we hear from the outside, but the deepest inner sound heard from the real self and the Truth". Regarding Hai's Master lineage, Kim stated: Ching Hai rarely speaks about her Master Khuda Ji.

Hai attempted to buy a copy of the Bhagavad Gita from a bookshop near the Ganges. Despite the shopkeepers' assertions that they did not have 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".

Ching Hai (born Hue Dang Trinh; 12 May 1950), commonly referred to as Suma or Supreme Master Ching Hai, is a Vietnamese spiritual leader of the Guanyin Famen (Chinese) or Quan Yin Method transnational Cybersect Based out of Taiwan, estimated to have 2 million followers worldwide. Ching Hai founded the Loving Hut vegan restaurant chain and vegan Celestial Shop fashion company under Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association.

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 on 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.