Operations
Ching Hai supports many vegetarian and vegan restaurants, and is described as the innovator of the international Loving Hut vegan restaurant group, with 135 restaurants worldwide in 2011.
Admission to her public seminars is free, but she has made millions of dollars as a painter, author, fashion designer, and jewelry designer. She launched an expensive clothing line in New York and Paris in 1995. Her business activities have led some detractors to question her motives, and she 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 believed to have bought a pair of used sweat socks for US$800 because "when the Master leaves the physical world, at least I will have her socks". In 1997, she stated that she earned more than former U.S. President Bill Clinton's annual salary of $200,000. Followers respond that much of the money she makes is used for helping the poor and providing necessities to refugees and victims of environmental disasters.
She offers a $64 catalogue of 50 books called "Elevation of the Soul" which include a Supreme Master cookbook, more than 400 videos of public appearances by the "Supreme Master" and an $8 video of "Funny Non-Saint Stories" taped in Los Angeles, plus footage of "Master's Birthday Celebration" in Taiwan. The 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..."
She has authored self-published picture books, such as The Birds in My Life and The Noble Wilds. The books consist of hundreds of photos described as being personally taken by Ching Hai.
The group maintains websites in at least 17 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. 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 August 2010, products from the Loving Hut restaurant chain, and many assorted lamps with names such as The Lucky Bagwa, At One With All Creation, Blessing Light, and Celestial Rain, among many others.
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Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)