23 Facts About Ching Hai

Ching Hai founded the Loving Hut vegan restaurant chain and vegan Celestial Shop fashion company under Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association.

Ching Hai was born to a Vietnamese mother and an ethnic Chinese father, on 12 May 1950 in a small village in the Quang Ngai Province in Vietnam.

Ching Hai attempted to buy a copy of the Bhagavad Gita from a bookshop near the Ganges.

Currently, Ching Hai doesn't operate under the guise of traditional Buddhism.

Ching Hai calls her meditation method the Guan Yin or Quan Yin method because She gave her first public teachings in Taiwan.

Ching Hai presides over an organization which owns restaurants and sells her jewellery and clothes.

Ching Hai is the founder of the Loving Hut restaurant chain, which in 2017 had 200 locations in 35 countries worldwide.

Ching Hai has founded organizations including the Supreme Master Ching Hai International, World Peace Media, Oceans of Love Entertainment and Supreme Master Television.

In late 2008, Ching Hai launched a media campaign in Australia and New Zealand asking people to "Be Green, Go Veg, Save the Planet".

In Prominent Nuns: Influential Taiwanese Voices, Religious studies Research associate Jennifer Eichman of the Centere of Buddhist Studies at SOAS University of London summarizes: While to some, Ching Hai's movement is considered Buddhist Heresy and to others a New Age religious organization.

In Eichman's own view, as infuriating as Hai's persona, her materialism and unsystematic religious synthesizing is to the Taiwanese Buddhist community and to others who have called her a cult leader, when we set aside her Buddhist roots and compare her work to that of an ever-changing array of self-made gurus, spiritual guides and newly formed religions that make up the New Age marketplace, it becomes evident that Ching Hai's work is neither the most radical nor innovative.

Ching Hai has always carried out her charitable mission without fanfare in any country hit by major disasters.

In Taiwan, Ching Hai has been active in Homeless street outreach.

Ching Hai first demonstrated the "Immeasurable Light Meditation Center and the Way of Sound Contemplation" or Quan Yin method of meditation in Miaoli, Taiwan.

Ching Hai's modified synthesis of the method is primarily in Christian-Buddhist jargon with a sprinkling of Hindu ideas.

Ching Hai is more likely to cite the Bible than Hindu texts.

Ching Hai claims, following standard Zen doctrine, that everyone is the Buddha; they simply need to realize this fact.

Professor of religious studies at the University of Lancaster Christopher Partridge wrote that Ching Hai visited India and was initiated by Thakar Singh, a Ruhani Satsang Sant Mat master.

Investigator Terry Lenzner reported in the 1996 Committee on Governmental Affairs "Hue [Ching Hai] reportedly hid her association with Thakar Singh when she arrived in Taiwan in October 1983 because it would have prevented her from becoming fully ordained in the Buddhist order".

The Quan Yin method and Ching Hai's group is banned in China since 1995.

Miami-Dade seized the property of Ching Hai, known locally under the pseudonym Celestia De Lamour, to help recover the costs of restoration.

Ching Hai is a supporter of Donald Trump and claimed Trump was a "God-Chosen Leader of America and Bringer of World Peace".

Ching Hai supported overturning the results of the 2020 US election.