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 12 May 1950 in a small village in the Quang Ngai Province in Vietnam. At 19, during the height of the Vietnam War, she developed a relationship with a German scientist and doctor who was a relief worker: Trinh worked as a Red Cross interpreter in Europe. They married, but separated after two years when she left him to pursue spiritual enlightenment. 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, and became a disciple of Thakar Singh. During her stay at his ashram, she learned the Sant Mat 'Light and Sound' meditation technique which Thakar Singh taught, and from which her Quan Yin Method is derived.
According to an account by Patricia Thornton, Ching Hai's recognition as a spiritual leader began in 1982, when she tried to buy a copy of the Hindu sacred work Bhagavad Gita from a small shop beside the Ganges. The shopkeepers denied having a copy, 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."
In 1983, she followed a Vietnamese Buddhist monk in Taiwan named Jing-Xing. Unaware of her prior connection to Thakar Singh, Jing-Xing ordained her in 1984 as "Thanh Hai". In Mandarin this is Ching Hai, which means "pure ocean".
According to her official biography, Ching Hai was born to a well-off naturopath's family in Âu Lạc (old name for the region north of Hanoi) in Vietnam. Though raised as a Roman Catholic, she learned the basics of Buddhism from her grandmother. After being given a divine transmission of the Inner Light and Sound by a true Master in the Himalayas, she renamed the technique the Quan Yin Method.
No initiation or membership fees are collected from disciples, but the bulk of her financial support comes from Taiwan, where her following is the strongest; her followers in the US are predominantly new immigrants from China and Vietnam. Her Supreme Master Meditation Centers, incorporated in Los Angeles and San Jose and several US states, benefit from tax-exempt status as religious organizations. Ching Hai has been 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". The organisation includes restaurants and outlets for jewellery and clothes designed by her.
Read more about this topic: Ching Hai
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