Suma Ching Hai
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Ching Hai, or Suma Ching Hai, (TC: 清海無上師, Pinyin: Qing Hai Wu Shang Shi; Vietnamese: Thanh Hải Vô Thượng Sư) (supposedly May 12, 1950) is a spiritual teacher of the Quan Yin Method, a style of meditation that she claims saviors such as the Buddha and Jesus used. Through this meditation, she professes to have achieved the "fifth level", making her a "Fifth Level Master" among her followers.
She claims to be an incarnation of God, the Buddha, and the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, popularly known as Kuan Yin. Ching Hai teaches that what she calls "the Quan Yin Method" refers to a "Method of Meditation on The Inner Sound" [觀音静坐法門]. She has lectured extensively around the world, promoting her form of meditation as one by which an individual can attain the highest level of divine realization. To practice this form of meditation, she requires beginners to undergo an initiation, in which afterwards she purports will enable her to reveal to the new disciple the inner light of god, whether she is physically present or not.
Critics often point to here glamorous attire, and her commercial enterprises, which are out of line with the monastic life and she is regarded by some as a cult leader. In the past, she has claimed that her annual salary was more than that of former US President Bill Clinton after being embroiled in a financing scandal [1]. She is also accused of brainwashing her disciples [2].
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[edit] Biography
She was born to a well-off family in Vietnam, and the daughter of a naturopath. She was brought up as a Roman Catholic, and claims to have learned the basics of Buddhism from her grandmother.
At the age of eighteen, Ching Hai moved to England to study, and then later to France and then Germany, where she worked for the Red Cross and married a German scientist. After two years of marriage, with the consent of her husband, they separated. At this time, she says that she studied various meditation practices and spiritual disciplines under the guidance of teachers who were within her reach.
After many years, Ching Hai claims to have found the Quan Yin Method and a "Divine Transmission" in the Himalayas.
[edit] Unofficial Version
In contradiction to the official website and publications, there are articles found on the internet which paint a completely different version of Ching Hai's past.
The articles together reveal that Ching Hai was born as Hue Dang Trinh on May 12, 1950 in a small village in the same province where the My Lai Massacre later occurred in Vietnam in 1968. The articles also assert that as a teenager, she befriended many American soldiers during the Vietnam War and gave birth to a girl fathered by one of them, and that the daughter later killed herself at the age of 20 (Ching Hai's family and acquaintances dimiss this story as hearsay. The source cited in the articles is an undergraduate thesis paper which attributes the claim to a single interview with an unnamed Vietnamese-American in California. This is the same source cited for the "drinking bathwater" and the "purchasing of $800 socks" detailed below - see Criticism). Afterwards, 19 year old Trinh married a German international relief worker, moved to Britain, and then to Germany. Presumably alone, she then immigrated to India to study Buddhism under a Buddhist monk before she became the newest "star pupil" of Thakar Singh from whom it is believed her Quan Yin Method is derived.
Ching Hai's name reportedly was given to her in Taiwan in 1983 from a Buddhist nun named Venerable Xing Jing. She was ordained the religious name "Ching Hai," meaning "pure ocean." The nun was unaware of the close association between Ching Hai and Thakar Singh.
The articles for the above can be found here: [1] and [2]
[edit] Religious career
In the years after her enlightenment, Ching Hai lived the life of a Tibetan Buddhist nun. It is through the insistent requests and efforts of her earlier disciples in Taiwan and the United States, that Ching Hai has come to lecture throughout the world, and has initiated many tens of thousands of spiritual aspirants. She continued to dress as a nun up until around 1990 when she began wearing her own fashion designs and grew out her hair.
[edit] Teachings
The core of Ching Hai’s teachings is promotion of the prescribed meditation on the inner light and sound. "Not until one becomes fully enlightened through meditation," Ching Hai says, "will true happiness and permanent freedom from suffering be obtained."
She teaches that this physical world is a mere illusion created by Maya, or the negative power, also described by other spiritual teachers and that only through initiation by an authentic living Master can a seeker remember his true self and become one with God again.
The minimum amount of time she recommends to be spent in meditation is two and a half hours a day for her initiated disciples, although she encourages them to meditate much longer if possible. Disciples are advised to maintain a very high moral standard in order to ensure that their progress in meditation will not be hampered by the accruing bad karma.
Helping others is another important tenet of Ching Hai’s teachings. She advises her disciples to sacrifice for others and use what they have to assist those in need, or to carry out so-called “Master’s work,” which basically means helping others to attain enlightenment by spreading her teachings, volunteering at the local meditation center, even duties as menial as doing the neighbour's housework while she is ill. Master Ching Hai tells her disciples that helping others speeds their spiritual progress, but that it should be done not for the goal of attaining merit but out of genuine concern for the welfare of others.
Ching Hai keeps in contact with her disciples by speaking at meditation retreats that she occasionally puts on for them, as well as by communing inwardly with them when they meditate. She says that the real Master is not her physical body, but the omnipresent "God Power" that she possesses. Thus, she often tells her disciples that she is always with them, supporting and protecting them, even if her physical body isn't near.
[edit] The Quan Yin Method
Main Article: Quan Yin Method
Ching Hai initiates spiritual aspirants into the Quan Yin Method, also called the "Inner Light and Sound meditation." This was the method Ching Hai claims to have used to attain enlightenment.
Ching Hai contends that practice of the Quan Yin Method of meditation is one way for a soul to become permanently liberated from reincarnation, and to avoid having to live out the karma it created during previous lives. Quan Yin meditation is said to be enjoyable and uplifting and also makes a person more loving and compassionate, according to Ching Hai. Maintaining what she calls "inward purity" is a major facet of Ching Hai’s teachings because what she calls "negative thoughts" are said by her to create bad karma which in turn causes suffering and impedes spiritual progress. For example, she has blamed the occurrence of wars on the “vicious thoughts” that people have had in the past which eventually manifest as actual battles on earth. "As you think, so you become," is a favorite saying of Ching Hai.
The method involves meditation on the "inner light and the inner sound of God", or the Word 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. The Quan Yin Method requires two and a half hours of meditation per day and adherence to the five precepts followed by Buddhists:
- Refrain from taking the life of sentient beings
- Refrain from speaking what is not true
- Refrain from taking what is not offered
- Refrain from sexual misconduct
- Refrain from the use of intoxicants
The first precept requires abstaining from eating meat and eggs. Ching Hai states that even unfertilized eggs contain half the life force of an animal, therefore eating them is akin to "half-killing." Making a living off of the production or trade of meat, eggs, or intoxicants is also a violation of the precepts. Ching Hai says that if a person adheres to these requirements, that person would enter nirvana upon his/her death.
[edit] The Convenient Method
For the people who find it difficult to cease eating animal products entirely or have busy schedules, the "Convenient Method" is offered instead as a preliminary to the Quan Yin 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.
[edit] Criticism
Detractors have thought that Ching Hai may only be teaching these methods for her own profit, thus the media giving her the nickname, "Part Buddha, Part Madonna". Since claiming to attain enlightenment, she has opened vegetarian restaurants, held public seminars, and has made millions of dollars as a painter, fashion designer, and jewelry designer. She has also raised eyebrows for her flamboyant dress sense, which is not in line with that of 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]. Through 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. Criticisms of Ching Hai tend to focus on the fact that her disciples buy much of her artwork, which critics see as indirectly donating to her. Followers insist that most of the money she makes is used for helping the poor, providing necessities to refugees, and victims of environmental disasters.
[edit] Teachings
Her own Quan Yin Method has also been criticized by some people. It is said that the method is similar to the practice of Surat Shabd Yoga from the Sant Mat tradition. It is a spiritual path consisting mainly of a meditation on light and sound and is said to effect the transport of the soul through different spiritual levels of existence to a final merging in God. Sant Mat is generally the name used for the path.
To counter the argument above, followers of the Quan Yin Method claim that when a true living master becomes fully enlightened, their teachings and so called "method" are all fundamentally the same. Followers believe that before a living master passes on, his or her lineage may be passed on and continued to be imparted by successive masters who have affinity with the path.
[edit] Brainwashing
As part of their meditation routine, followers of Ching Hai partially cover their heads under a sheet of cloth or blanket while meditating. It has been suggested that without proper ventilation, one might become more susceptible to suggestions and hallucinations. However, while meditating away from the view of un-initiated people, the meditators do not necessarily use this cloth to cover their heads completely.
Some possible examples of brainwashing by hallucination are in one case, one disciple literally drank her bathwater and bought her used personal items. One disciple is supposed to have bought her sweat socks for $800 because "when the Master leaves the physical world, at least I will have her socks" [3]. However, the authenticity of the above is unknown. Many others, and the majority of the initiates have not heard of such incidence and would not share the same logic.
She also claims that those who recite her name will become instantly liberated and enlightened in her book The Key of Immediat Enlightenment [4].
[edit] Politics
In 1996, Ching Hai openly asked her followers to contribute money to the Clinton campaign following a meeting with cultist member Charlie Trie. It has now been learned that most of the checks delivered to the Presidential Legal Expense Trust were in Ching Hai's name. She stated that she earnt more than Clinton's annual salary of $200,000 which is incongruous with a monastic lifestyle which requires that clergy do not engage in profit or commercial activity [5].
Ching Hai was recently investigated by the government of Taiwan. The authorities issued a warrant to search her centers in Taiwan for not paying taxes and to check if she has been involved in any illegal activities since the organization has so much funds in her bank account.
[edit] Quotes
- "A Master is one who has the key for you to become a Master... to help you realize that you are also a Master and that you and God are also One. That's all... that's the only role of the Master."
- "Our path is not a religion. I do not convert anyone to Catholicism or Buddhism, or any other "ism". I simply offer you a way to know yourself; to find out where you come from; to remember your mission here on Earth; to discover the secrets of the universe; to understand why there is so much misery, and see what awaits us after death."
- "We are separated from God because we are too busy. If someone is talking to you and the telephone keeps ringing, and you are busy cooking or chatting with other people, then no one can get in touch with you. The same thing happens with God. He is calling every day and we have no time for Him and keep hanging up on Him."
- "I invite you to shut up." - responding to a Christian heckler during a lecture in Bankstown, Sydney, Australia in 1993
[edit] See also
- List of self-proclaimed deities
- 1996 United States campaign finance controversy
- Timeline of Chinese espionage against the U.S.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/09/ching.hai/
- ^ http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/course/htmlproj/prospectus.html#beliefs
- ^ "Clinton's Buddhist Martha Stewart", Time Magazine, 1997-01-20.
- ^ "Cult branches spread worldwide", South China Morning Post, 1999-01-03, p. 7.
- ^ http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/09/ching.hai/
[edit] External links
- God's Direct Contact (Official site)
- The Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association
- Quan Yin Online
- The collection of art creations by Supreme Master Ching Hai
