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Immaterial Girl
Part Buddha, part Madonna, Supreme Master Ching Hai promises immediate
enlightenment to San Jose's Asian immigrants
By Rafer Guzmán
Photographs by Christopher Gardner
As flight 717 circles the sky on a recent Wednesday evening, a group of about 150
people sit meditating on the þoor of a waiting area at San Jose International
Airport. Dozens of Asian men in dark suits, each wearing a yellow ribbon on his lapel,
walk the airport halls and direct wanderers to the group. Men outside wave cars into
the short-term parking lot, which is Þlling up fast.
Suddenly, the meditators rise to their feet and storm Gate A8, which is already
swarming with bodies. American Airlines Flight 717 is pulling in. With some
persuasion, the admirers line up on either side of the gate's walkway, and the yellow-
ribboned officials link hands to form barriers against the masses, whose numbers
continue to grow. Chinese, Vietnamese and broken English combine to make a rising
din. An elderly Chinese woman thrusts her arms into the crowd, trying to pry open a
place for herself. Gate A8 is a parted sea of ecstatic faces, all of them waiting for the
appearance of the Supreme Master Suma Ching Hai.
Ching Hai is many things: painter, poet, Buddhist nun and spiritual leader. She is also
a fashion designer, beauty makeover consultant and restaurateur. According to most
of her followers, Ching Hai is not only a saintly philanthropist who took the
Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong under her wing, she is also the living
reincarnation of the Buddha and Jesus Christ. According to her critics--and they are
few--she operates one of the largest and fastest-growing religious cults in the world.
The Supreme Master is on the Web:
The Inner Light and Sound: A
complete library of information about Ching Hai and her teachings. Available in
English, Chinese and Vietnamese.
The Quan Yin Method: Everything you
need to know about Ching Hai's Key of Immediate Enlightenment.
Is Ching Hai truly the Messiah? Of the several hundred assembled worshippers here
tonight, only I will later be fortunate enough to sit just inches from the Supreme Master
and ask her this very question. For if she is the Messiah, she has inexplicably chosen
to manifest herself as the owner of 56 vegetarian restaurants which cover the globe
from Taipei to Melbourne to San Jose. On the
corner of Twelfth Street and East Santa Clara Street, once the site of Paolo's, the posh
Italian restaurant that was for decades the hangout of the Valley's agricultural and
political elite, Ching Hai's establishment now serves a stunning, if overly ambitious,
variety of vegetarian dishes ranging from spring rolls and faux swordfish to pasta
marinara.
It also doubles as a library and museum containing hundreds of Ching Hai
magazines, books and videotapes. On posters and laminated photographs, the
Master's face smiles beatifically, though her slightly paralyzed left cheek gives her the
appearance of wearing a sort of foxy grin. Mannequins stand adorned in her own
haute couture outfits, which seem to draw from the fashions of both Star Trek
and Dallas. On the walls hang her simple paintings of flowers, trees and
landscapes. Above the tables of the dining patrons looms a gigantic TV screen which
broadcasts the Master's teachings and, occasionally, her music video, which features
her singing in dance-club duds and vogueing like Madonna.
Though Ching Hai may appear to have come from another planet, she was actually
born in Vietnam and spent much of her adult life in Taiwan. Though she refers to the
two countries by their respective colonial names of "Au Lac" and "Formosa," she has a
strong affinity for both, and reportedly has her largest followings there. Here in
America, almost all of Ching Hai's followers are new arrivals from Vietnam and China.
There seems to be something about the five-foot-tall leader which strongly appeals to
these immigrant groups. She avoids overtly authoritarian cliches and instead
cultivates the image of a wise old aunt. Rather than preach fire and brimstone, she
frames her lectures in a Q&A format vaguely reminiscent of Confucius and his
students. (In the transcript of one lecture, when a disciple asks if he would be justified
in killing a murderer to prevent future bloodshed, Ching Hai sagely advises him to go
to the police instead.) In addition, the title of her new book, I Have Come to Take
You Home, may resonate strongly with new arrivals to the States. But perhaps
more significantly, Ching Hai seems to offer ancient religion's comfortable familiarity
and America's crass but coveted commercialism.
Both a religious idol and a Third World aristocrat, Ching Hai bears more than a
passing resemblance to Imelda Marcos, adorned in her self-styled "fairy clothes,"
which models have paraded down runways in the world's fashion capitals. A Buddhist
nun who preaches asceticism, Ching Hai can nevertheless be seen in her magazine,
Suma Ching Hai News, giving makeovers and fashion tips to female followers.
"A listless-looking and middle-aged fellow sister, after being made up by Master,
turned into a totally new person in five minutes," reads the article next to a full-color
photo spread. "Everyone exclaimed:'Even the not-so-great ones become beautiful!' "
And though Ching Hai claims that one has no need of anything on earth except the
truth, she freely admits that selling her merchandising creations supports her
worldwide organization.
The Hai Life
Like many Eastern belief systems, Ching Hai's centers around meditation, but her own
method, called Quan Yin, contains "The Key of Immediate Enlightenment"--no waiting
necessary. "Quan means 'contemplation,' and Yin means 'inner vibration,'" explains
Pam-ela Millar, a Ching Hai representative living in Palo Alto. "It's kind of the light and
the sound. It's basically a silent meditation."
This is about all the information one can coax from the Ching Hai group about the
Quan Yin method, which they guard like a secret recipe. "I will explain everything
during initiation," Ching Hai says in public. Initiations take place at the 40-acre Ching
Hai Meditation Center in Morgan Hill, to which actual visits are discouraged. Almost all
that is known about the group's actual methods is that it requires keeping a strict
vegetarian diet and meditating a minimum of two and a half hours per day while
chanting the Master's name.
Ching Hai also teaches what she calls the Convenient Method--a sort of Quan Yin Lite
for new initiates--which requires meditating only half an hour per day, and eating
vegetarian for 10 days per month. "When children are 6 years old, if they are with
initiated parents, they can be half-initiated," Ching Hai rather arbitrarily mandates.
"When they are 12, if they have parents who also practice, they can be initiated fully."
Food for Thought
At the restaurant, a smiling volunteer serves a dish of simulated chicken to Millar. A
Ching Hai "liaison" and one of the organization's few Caucasian members, Millar
possesses none of the zombie-like qualities one tends to attribute to cultists. Millar
calls herself a "skeptic" and says she's "not big on authority." She grew up in Oregon
near a small town that was once called Antelope before the followers of cult leader
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh successfully changed its name to Rajneeshpuram. Millar
says she has looked into various religious organizations, but found them all to be
scams. "It seemed like they wanted to give you something, but they always wanted
something back," she says.
Traveling in Taiwan on a business trip, Millar discovered Ching Hai's teachings
through the niece of a business contact. Her skeptical nature, she claims, made her
unreceptive at first. "I thought, 'I'll wait and see.' " But before long, she began to feel
that Ching Hai was different from other leaders.
"She won't accept any contributions," Millar says. "We can't give her gifts." The Master
does not charge for teaching her meditation methods, she adds, "but it requires a
commitment."
Seven years after her introduction to the Ching Hai group, Millar has risen to become
a high-level member responsible for tasks such as putting together the Master's
books, arranging ceremonies and talking to the press. But she insists that the
organization is very "laissez-faire." "We change the rules all the time," she laughs.
"We don't have a hierarchy. ... I like it, it's really formless. It's a formless teaching, too."
As to the Master's role in all this, Miller cannot quite say. "I don't know--she's like a
guide. She teaches us a lot. This role is both inside and outside."
For Millar, all the proof of the Master's divine nature comes from the Quan Yin method.
"It's not just the videos, the books," she says. "She comes to me during meditation
sometimes."
I found that Millar, a high-level member of the group, and the "not so great ones" seem
equally enraptured with this new religion.
"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."
Trance With Me
Ching Hai's name is new to most cult experts, but her behavior, and that of her
followers, is not. The Chicago-based Cult Awareness Network provides
lists and definitions of common cult practices. Under "Techniques of mind-control,"
one finds a description of "thought-stopping techniques" such as "meditating, chanting
and repetitious activities which, when used excessively, induce a state of high
suggestibility." Also noted is the concept of "love-bombing," which "discourages
doubts and reinforces the need to belong through use of child-like games.
Joe Kelly, an exit counselor in Philadelphia, once belonged to the infamous
Transcendental Meditation movement begun by the Beatles' guru, the Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi. The Maharishi promises to teach his members Yogic Flying, a
levitation-like ability achieved through meditation.
Without condemning meditation, Kelly posits that "the result of being in a trance state
is that it unhooks your critical thinking skills." Furthermore, Kelly says, a trance state
can result in what he calls "an internal experience."
"It's context-dependent," he explains. "A Christian might experience Jesus, a Buddhist
might experience Nirvana." It's no stretch to imagine, then, that a Ching Hai follower
might experience Ching Hai. "When teaching comes after we have an internal
experience," Kelly says, "we tend to be more receptive to it."
Kelly also says that cults encourage members to "become dependent, like a child."
Kelly scoffs at Ching Hai's candy-tossing ritual. "This is something that's so typical," he
says, recalling that the Maharishi did exactly the same thing. "Our Master would throw
the candy, and we would dive for it because it had been blessed." He adds, "That is
not a Buddhist concept."
According to Kelly, even Ching Hai's strange line of fashion wear is not unheard of in
the cult trade. "Yeah, TM did the same thing," he recalls. "They put out a line of these
dowdy women's dresses that the Maharishi believed heightened female spirituality."
Kelly's strongest bit of advice in identifying cults is to look for "the subjective nature of
the doctrine. That's the clincher with these meditation groups. They're always
changing the rules so you can't get a handle on anything." Recalling the words
"laissez-faire" and "formless" from Millar, I wonder if Kelly might not be prophetic
himself.
Janja Lalich, author of Captive Hearts, Captive Minds, a book on post-cult
recovery, provides a similar diagnosis. Her assertion that "66 percent of the people
who join cults are recruited by friends or family members" seems borne out by the
Asian members interviewed for this story, all of whom had been indoctrinated by
relatives. "It's not like the '60s, where we were scared of the Moonies standing on the
street," Lalich says.
She also advised me to "see how they're answering questions. Are they scripted?" I
could only think of this passage from Ching Hai's literature: "Our path isn't a religion.
... I simply offer you a way to know yourself."
"If anything is indicative of a cult, it's when people can't give you a straight answer,"
Lalich says. She adds, "They're very good at turning the questions back on you. That's
a classic technique. Or they'll talk gobbledygook."
In her list of cult characteristics, Lalich includes a "hidden agenda," or what she calls a
"double set of ethics. As a member, you can be open and honest. To outsiders, you
can lie." Ching Hai's followers may or may not be consciously deceptive, but I did find
that, despite their refusal to describe themselves as a religion, Ching Hai's San Jose
and Los Angeles branches are registered with the IRS as tax-exempt organizations,
with their principal activities noted as "religious" and "church/synagogue,"
respectively.
Till Cult Do Us Part
"It looks to me like one of the fastest-growing cults in the world," says Dr. Margaret
Singer, perhaps the country's first and foremost cult expert. Dr. Singer, who has been
following modern cults since their appearance in the late 1950s (she cites the
Moonies, the Hare Krishnas and the TM movement as the earliest examples), gained
national fame for her work with the defense team of heiress Patty Hearst, who killed a
man in a bank robbery while under the influence of a revolutionary cult. Singer, who
keeps extensive files on cultic groups around the world, considers Ching Hai unusual
only in that most large, far-reaching organizations are led by men. Female cult
leaders, says Singer, usually control small, local groups of anywhere from five to 50
members. "And they keep a very tight hold on the group," she adds.
Only within the last nine or ten months has she begun receiving calls from men and
women--just over a dozen of them, and almost all from San Francisco and San Jose--
who have lost their spouses to the Ching Hai organization. "Almost everyone I talked
to," she says, "had lost a partner--a girlfriend, a husband--because they had given up
everything to go to work in a restaurant or join the group."
Singer says that the callers also complained about the tremendous sums of money
their spouses gave to the Ching Hai organization. "Husbands and wives would be
very distressed about the amount of money the spouse paid for trinkets," she says.
From what she heard, she says, it seems the Ching Hai group pressures its members
to buy merchandise. "They would have meetings where they would sell these trinkets,
and the asking price would be five dollars, but the group would urge people to pay
more and more, like $50."
In her talks with these abandoned spouses, Singer says she has heard no evidence of
physical or sexual abuse. Nor does she think Ching Hai's doctrines, which include
relatively few apocalyptic prophecies, point toward the sort of fiery endings met with by
the self-immolated Branch Davidians or the self-poisoned followers of Jim Jones.
"This one doesn't seem to be on that pathway," Singer says. "The way the group ends
up is usually quite predictable based on the personality of the leader." Singer sees
this group as dominated by its leader's personality and ego. "Ching Hai seems to have
fantasies about being around lots of people, educated people, wearing fancy clothes
and having a lot of power. But she doesn't seem to have fantasies about suicidal
revolutions or apocalyptic endings."
Though Ching Hai may not pose any physical threat to her followers, she may
nevertheless be doing them other forms of damage. "It was mostly just the money, and
the breaking up of the family," Singer says of her callers' laments. "That's what was
causing the greatest pain. Telling the spouse that if they don't join Ching Hai, they
would have to leave them."
Spiritual Tug of War
San Jose resident Steve Krysiak, who was involved with a Vietnamese follower of
Ching Hai, has his own story to tell. "I compare it with Manson," Krysiak says. "He
imprinted them with LSD--I think Ching Hai uses meditation."
In 1990, Krysiak met Trang (not her real name), a Vietnamese immigrant who had
been captured by the Communists in her homeland, but had escaped on the boats to
America where she found work as a hairdresser. When the couple met in Fremont,
Trang had three children and was already following Ching Hai. Krysiak says he
cautioned Trang against Ching Hai, but took her in anyway. "We had a wonderful
relationship," says Krysiak. "Highly sexual. She was the most highly sexual person I
ever met."
That soon changed, however. "She just said, 'I have no sexual energy,'" Krysiak
laments. "All my Vietnamese friends told me it would happen. The women die sexually
with Ching Hai."
The relationship suffered, says Krysiak, as he and the Ching Hai group vied for
Trang's affections. "Ching Hai wants them to meditate five hours a day, don't worry
about the kids," says Krysiak. He claims he sometimes walked in upon Trang
meditating with a blanket on her lap, which she had been instructed to throw over
herself so as not to reveal the secret Quan Yin method. "I'd see her doing it, and I'd
say, 'You've been seeing that damn Ching Hai again!' And she'd say, 'You've been
spying on me!' "
Trang ran up $9,000 worth of credit card debt, which Krysiak assumed was going to
Ching Hai. "You know, those videos are $10 for people who are into the cult, but
they're $28 or $30 for actual members," he says. He adds that Trang charged a plane
ticket to fly to New York for her initiation into the group, bought a flute because Ching
Hai played the instrument, decorated her room with Ching Hai posters, and got plastic
surgery and breast implants because Ching Hai had supposedly undergone the same
operations.
Trang also became a "fanatic vegetarian," Krysiak says. "She tried to get the kids
involved in it, but they hated it. It was lucky that they were so Americanized that they
had to have their McDonald's."
Trang was not so lucky. "She got thyroid disease," says Krysiak. "The Vietnamese use
coarse salt for cooking, with no iodine added, you know. And when Trang cut out her
fish, she got thyroid disease. She had to go twice for radioactive thyroid treatment, and
they killed a little bit too much thyroid. Now she has to take thyroid [medication] for the
rest of her life."
Even after the illness, the Ching Hai group won the tug-of-war for Trang. "People told
me that when they get them away from the Master, they might get away for a while, but
the members will call them on the phone and try to pull them back." Trang left Krysiak
in 1992.
Krysiak moved to San Jose to get away from the memories of Trang only to see the
Ching Hai restaurant open a few blocks from his house. "I'm calm about all this now,"
he says, "but I didn't used to be." Krysiak tells of the day he lost his temper and
stormed down to the restaurant. "I was out front, screaming, 'Ching Hai is a fake!' Well,
I went back later and apologized to the owner there, and you know what she told me?
'Don't worry--this happens to all our men.' "
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.' "
Advertisements For Herself
Ching Hai may be a recognizable figure to some in the Asian community, but despite
her restaurants, approximately 100,000 followers, and contact persons in 37
countries, the mainstream press seems almost completely unaware of her existence.
Even most cult experts knew nothing or little about her. The only readily available
material on Ching Hai comes from her own literature and the numerous sites that line
the World Wide Web, which usually offer little more than color photos of the Master
and suspiciously favorable interviews by foreign journalists.
A tireless publicity seeker, Ching Hai never misses an opportunity to gain credibility
and clout for her organization. She often claims to have been invited to the
conspicuously prestigious locations for her lectures--Georgetown University, UCLA
and the United Nations buildings in Geneva and New York--but rarely says by whom.
She also claims that seven United States governors proclaimed Feb. 22, 1994, as
"Supreme Master Ching Hai Day." As it turns out, the governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad,
actually did, in recognition of her $65,000 donation to relief efforts for victims of the
Mississippi River flooding.
Ching Hai's attempts in 1992 to help the Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong remain a
feather in the leader's cap, though they apparently failed. But the $200,000 she
promised to the Laguna Beach Fire Relief Coalition after Southern California was
ravaged by fires in 1993 reportedly never arrived.
In Taiwan, the story goes, Ching Hai even set up two front organizations to bestow
awards upon her in a public ceremony, and successfully persuaded a baffled United
States official to pose as the president of one.
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. At 19, during the height of the Vietnam War, Trinh left home with a German
doctor working for an international relief organization. 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.
Messiah: A Job Like Any Other
And now she is among us in San Jose. Her arrival is a rare and momentous occasion
which her followers have been anticipating since her last appearance here in 1994.
For new initiates (personally selected by Ching Hai through their written applications
and photos) their only contact with the Master has been through the literature and
videos available in the restaurant's library. Perhaps a fortunate few have been able to
channel her as promised. Now, however, they will be able to see and hear her in
person. Some may even be touched by her.
Cries of adoration greet Ching Hai when she appears in the portals of Gate A8. As
she walks, her path is strewn with flowers, prostrate bodies and outstretched hands.
She smiles modestly. Once outside, she is escorted into the back seat of a black Isuzu
Trooper. She waves to the undulating crowd as the car speeds away, heading for the
nearby Red Lion Hotel. For the next hour, the short-term parking lot of the San Jose
Airport is jammed with cars heading for the exit to follow her.
The Fir Room of the Red Lion has been prepared for the Master's arrival. On the stage
is an assortment of pillows on a white chair. Above it hangs a giant banner, decorated
by stick-on gift bows, which reads, "Welcome SUMA CHING HAI to San Jose." Mylar
party balloons float in the air, displaying Hallmark-style messages: "World's Greatest!"
and "I Love You." A yellow microphone waits for its Master's voice. The 600-person
audience chatters happily until an announcer approaches the microphone.
"Please meditate while waiting for Master," he scolds. Within two seconds, the room
grows completely silent. Upon the request of a yellow-ribboned official, a fussing
newborn is whisked through the doors by its mother. For the next hour, the only
sounds in the Fir Room are the microphone tests and the setting up of several video
cameras and klieg lights.
When Ching Hai enters the room, the crowd stands and applauds. She walks under
an arch of party balloons strung together by multicolored ribbons and down the center
aisle toward the stage, stopping now and then to direct a smile at a lucky follower who
inevitably convulses with delight. She takes the stage, soaking up the adoration and
barely able to conceal her pleasure. She begins her talk with phrases that are
alternately humble and self-congratulatory: "Thank you for your love. I don't know if I'm
good enough for you." She sighs. "I just try to be ordinary citizen. Then someone must
come along and remind me I am Supreme Master Suma Ching Hai!" All laugh heartily.
After a long and tortuous lecture, Ching Hai takes questions from the audience, even
answering once or twice in Mandarin.
"I'm having trouble practicing the Quan Yin," laments a young Vietnamese man. "I'm
okay with the sound and the light, but the Quan Yin is different." Ching Hai asks,
"Why?" but the young man doesn't know. "Try to practice for one minute," Ching Hai
responds patiently. "Then practice for two. Soon, it will get easier." The young man's
shoulders collapse with gratitude. "Oh, thank you, Master," he gushes. The crowd
applauds.
Later, Ching Hai gets flustered by a more difficult question. A young medical student
wants to know if the Master condones euthanasia. "Are you trying to get me into
trouble?" she snaps. She paces the stage. "What's that? What's that for?" The medical
student hesitantly replies, "It's mercy killing," and begins to explain about comas and
brain death, but Ching Hai talks over him. "Is that a law in America?" she asks. Before
the student can answer, she sighs crabbily. "I don't know--I'm from Taiwan. Why am I
responsible for all the countries?" She picks at the pillows where she was sitting: "Is
that my hair?" Finally, she confronts the student. "Sometimes, people wake up. So it's
hard for me to tell you which one to kill and which one not," she says. Laughter erupts
from the crowd, and then applause.
"Is God a person or an idea?" someone asks, to which Ching Hai replies, "I have no
idea." More delighted laughter from the audience. "Anyone here want to describe
God?" From the front row comes the correct answer: "A loving master who doesn't eat
meat!" Ching Hai chuckles. "Yes, something like that," she says.
Ching Hai wraps up her talk well after midnight. She makes her last rounds through
the audience, touching a head here, smiling beatifically there. A black man in African
garb shrinks in his seat as she passes, his hands clasped together in worship,
sobbing in great gasps, looking into the Master's face while tears stream down his.
Ching Hai chortles as she passes him, and stops to poke her green umbrella at him,
which he fondles gratefully.
I have stayed only because I want to arrange for a private interview with the Master.
When I find Millar, she says she will see about it--and within seconds, I find myself
sitting in a chair face to face with the Supreme Master Ching Hai. Our knees are
almost touching. Six hundred pairs of eyes are riveted to us, several men hold
microphones less than an inch from my nose, and every video camera and flood light
in the house bears down upon me and the Master.
With sweat already soaking through my shirt, I begin asking questions. Ching Hai tells
me her organization is "rather big," with "a lot of centers around the world--40 or 50
countries." (The number, if one assumes that every country listed in her book boasts
not just a liaison but an entire center, is actually 37.)
My next question--about funding--is answered with much humility. Though she calmly
explains that the sales of clothing and jewelry accounts for most of her money, she
adds, "We don't really need that much."
She claims, as does Millar, that she and her followers sleep in plastic tents. "We don't
have a temple. Use tents. Plastic cheap. $40, $50 and you have a temple of your own.
We live very simple. We eat vegetarian." Yet, one elderly woman I spoke with bragged
that Ching Hai dwells in a beautiful house on top of a hill, and that she and other
followers traveled there to camp out in tents around the house.
Ching Hai talks briefly of her philanthropic work in Thailand, Indonesia, the
Philippines, Hong Kong and here in the United States. "Where," I ask again, "does this
money come from? Ching Hai shakes her head. "I don't know. God gives it to me." She
laughs. Neither of us seem to take this answer seriously--but I write it down anyway.
According to Millar, the Master's clothing and jewelry are "very expensive, but it's very
high quality." In the same breath, Millar also tells me that when the Master wishes to
donate money to charities, she establishes a bank account to which followers can
contribute. God has certainly been kind to Ching Hai: in 1993, her Los Angeles
branch alone took in $395,518.
My last question to the Master concerns a woman who had earlier stood to proclaim to
Ching Hai, "The world has waited thousands of years for you." I reminded Ching Hai of
these words, and asked, "Do you think this is true?"
"It's true for her," Ching Hai replied.
"Do you consider yourself the Messiah?"
"Messiah not important," Ching Hai says, embarking upon a mini-monologue
suggesting that being a messiah is a job like any other. I find it hard to concentrate on
her words, and stop writing momentarily. "A messiah or a journalist," she says. "No
difference."
The interview is done, and the Master and I shake hands. Long after she has retired to
her room, groups of disciples hang around in the lobby to touch the arm of the
journalist who shook hands with the Master. "You were so close, right
next to her," a wide-eyed girl exclaims, stroking my shoulder.
It occurs to me that I may now be seen on a videotape in the Ching Hai library: the
American reporter conducting an interview with the Supreme Master. Our words may
end up on a Web site, or in the Suma Ching Hai magazine, or condensed into
an aphorism in a book. Against my will, I had become another prop in Ching Hai's
magic show. Like the followers milling about me, I had stepped into the light and
sound of the Master.
*This article was updated in July 2024 to remove disputed and unsubstantiated information about a daughter.
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Lionized: Supreme Master Suma Ching Hai holds court at the Red Lion Hotel
during her recent visit
Pendantic: The Supreme Master's image graces Web pages, newsletters, the
walls of her restaurants and the homes of her supporters.
From the March 28-
April 3, 1996 issue of Metro
Copyright © 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.