Ching Hai

Ching Hai
Supreme Master Ching Hai
Born	Hue Dang Trinh (1950-05-12) 12 May 1950 (age 66) Quảng Ngãi Province, Vietnam
Known for	Founder of Quan Yin Method

Supreme Master (or "Suma") Ching Hai, (born 12 May 1950), is the spiritual teacher of the Quan Yin Method with an estimated 20,000 followers worldwide.

Ching Hai is a self-published writer and entrepreneur who heads the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association, a business group with worldwide interests in restaurants, fashion and jewelry design. She has been criticised for making allegedly ostentatious displays of generosity as well as self-promotion.

The San Francisco Weekly cites 1995 research by a Berkeley graduate student in journalism which says Ching Hai was born Hue Dang Trinh to a Vietnamese mother and an ethnic Chinese father, on 12 May 1950 in a small village in the Quảng Ngãi 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 naturopathic 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.