Still remember crescent posted a website on Master Ching Hai
last year? Check
A website... Gaining enlightenment... Opinions needed...
Supreme Master Ching Hai's cult has become one of the fastest
growing cults in the world with millions of followers.
This article will not only talk about her cult personality, but
also the question of... is she Enlightened, or a living Buddha she
claimed to be? (that will be the second post)
But first a brief intro about her and how I got to know more about
her.
My brief impression running through the website is that that Master
is definitely a charismatic cult leader. And then my friend told
me, yeah, I like the thing about Master Ching Hai that is in one
glance you'll be able to see she's a cult master 
She is very fond of appearing in fanciful styles:
And her appearance changes all the time too, like Michael Jackson
1993: 
1994: 
1996: 
1999: 
2000: 
2001: 
2006: 
So it was pretty easy to tell the kind of cult-like personality she
has. 
The reason for her changing appearance? "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."
Next, I briefly read through some articles and realised a few
things... Quan Yin method emphasizes a lot on Vegetarianism, 5
precepts, and practising a meditation method called 'Quan Yin
Method' that requires a divine transmission from Supreme Master
Ching Hai herself. I did not look more into that at that
time.
This article shows her cult personality in detail: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/03.28.96/suma-9613.html
"No, no, it's not a religion," said one young Vietnamese girl.
"It's more like, just finding out about you, who you are." Every
follower answered the same question with almost the same words:
"No, it's about finding yourself." Their religion, they proudly
say, is Buddhist, Christian, Catholic or Hindu--it just so happens
that they also worship the Supreme Master Suma Ching Hai.
In fact, they worship her so much that anything she touches becomes
a prized possession. Ching Hai's new book features a picture of the
Master about to engage in one of her favorite activities:
scattering handfuls of candy to her disciples. The caption reads,
"Master offers her love and blessing by sharing candies with the
gathered initiates." Indeed, after a recent Ching Hai lecture, one
follower offered me a handful of Jolly Ranchers and Fun-Size
Hershey bars, saying, "Here is Master candy! We love the candy
Master gives us. You know, it's different from other candy. We love
going around to get it, it's like being little kids."
Family relationships are affected (i.e the Master wants her
student to meditate 5 hours a day), financial difficulties, are
among those reported coming from this organisation.
Krysiak returned home to find he had locked himself out of his
house. "I called a locksmith, a Vietnamese guy, and I told him all
about it. He laughed. He said, 'In Vietnamese community, there are
two causes for divorce: Bay 101, and Ching Hai.' "
Master Ching Hai's lineage is from Sikkhism, though she claims
to represent all religions, especially Buddhism too (for example
Kuan Yin is a Buddhist Bodhisattva) due to her Buddhist involvement
in the past.
Reality Check
Ching Hai's knack for self-promotion shines in her official
biography, which reads more like a hagiography. In it, Ching Hai
appears as a "rare and noble child" who taught herself philosophy
at an early age and cried at the sight of slaughtered animals. The
prophecies of clairvoyants back up Ching Hai's claims to gurudom:
"She has come to this world, on the mission of Quan Yin, to save
sentient beings from misery." After Ching Hai learned the Quan Yin
meditation method from a mysterious Master in the Himalayas,
according to the biography, she relocated to Taiwan, where a group
of students guided by their prayers found her and coaxed the
reluctant woman into becoming their Master. The rest of the
biography is a paean to the Master's humility, humanitarian efforts
and impressive output of saleable products.
Entertaining though this mishmash of religious mythology, Eastern
folklore and public- relations razzle-dazzle may be, it's rather
less interesting than the story of Ching Hai revealed in the thesis
of UC-Berkeley graduate Eric Lai.
According to Lai's research, the Supreme Master was born Hue Dang
Trinh on May 12, 1950, in a small village in Vietnam, in the same
province which later saw the My Lai massacre. The daughter of a
Vietnamese mother and an ethnic Chinese father, Trinh reportedly
hung out with American soldiers as a teenager, and bore one a
daughter. At 19, during the height of the Vietnam War, Trinh left
home with a German doctor working for an international relief
organization. Trinh's daughter later killed herself at 20. Trinh
married the doctor, and the couple moved first to Britain and then
to Germany.
There, in 1979, she met a Buddhist monk whom she followed for three
years until she was denied entrance to his monastery on the basis
of gender. Trinh then moved to India to study Buddhism. It was here
that she became a prize pupil of Thakar Singh, who had just
splintered off from a Buddhist order, Radhasoami, to form his own
sect, Kirpal Light Satsang.
"Thakar Singh turned out to be the most scandalous guru in the
history of Radhasoami," writes David Christopher Lane, who while a
graduate student at UC- Berkeley met Singh in India in 1978 and has
since traced the guru's checkered career. According to Lane's
findings: "By the mid-1980s reports circulated throughout the world
about how Thakar had embezzled money, indulged in sexual affairs
with numerous women, and had engaged in violent interactions with
disciples." Some of the accusations included tying women up and
beating them regularly. But by the time Singh's crimes came to
light, Ching Hai had already learned from him the "light and sound"
meditation technique, and had left for Taiwan.
Lai's research revealed that in Taiwan, in 1983, Trinh studied with
a Buddhist nun named Xing-jing. Unaware of her association with
Singh, Xing-jing officially ordained Trinh in the order and gave
her the religious name "Ching Hai," which translates from Mandarin
as "pure ocean."
The next year, Ching Hai moved to a Buddhist temple in Queens, New
York. She taught meditation, and meditated herself for up to four
hours a day. One former colleague told Lai, "We were all impressed
by her devotion and sincerity." But a year and a half later, Ching
Hai began teaching the "light and sound" technique to her students,
though few responded favorably. Returning to Taiwan in 1986, Ching
Hai lured followers away from her former master, Xing-jing, and set
up a makeshift temple in an apartment in the Taipei suburbs. Rumors
about her prophetic abilities and unique meditation methods earned
her a large following, and by 1987 posters of Ching Hai appeared
all over Taipei. By the time the Taiwanese Buddhist community
learned of Ching Hai's past connection to the disgraced Satsang
cult, it was too late. The new Messiah had been born.
More info to come...
