Jan 26, 2012
Almost every day I get my lunch from The Loving Hut on Spadina. They offer delicious and healthy vegan meals for $10, the staff are totally sweet and it’s near work, I love it. One weird thing though is they have a library of books written by someone called The Supreme Master Ching Hai - books with titles like “The Birds in My Life”, all with a picture of this lady on the cover. Well, I just googled her and have discovered that my lunch money has been funding a lunatic…that is not a complaint. Here are the highlights… -Supreme Master Ching Hai is the self-titled founder and spiritual teacher of the Quan Yin Method with an estimated 20,000 followers world wide. -Ching Hai was criticised in the Western press as “The Immaterial Girl: Part Buddha, Part Madonna,” and as “The Buddhist Martha Stewart … merchandizing mystic from Taiwan. -In 1994, the local government in Vinh Long Province, Vietnam issued a declaration classifying Ching Hai’s operations as “religious propaganda” intended to “illegally oppose the government.” -Ching Hai asked her followers to contribute money to the Clinton Presidential Legal Expense Trust. US$880,000 was raised. However, the donations were returned when the Trust found irregularities involving identical signatures and consecutively numbered money orders. They also found donors listed who did not have the financial means to give that amount of money. -Ching Hai set up two front organisations to make awards for her, and manipulated a United States official into posing as the president of one in a public ceremony. -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 her book The Key of Immediate Enlightenment, it is said that those who recite her name would become elevated. -In 2004, an artificial island and 330-foot (100 m) long boardwalk created in the Biscayne National Park cost $1 million USD to remove after being illegally constructed by Ching Hai, known locally as a wealthy property owner under the pseudonym Celestia De Lamour.

Almost every day I get my lunch from The Loving Hut on Spadina. They offer delicious and healthy vegan meals for $10, the staff are totally sweet and it’s near work, I love it. One weird thing though is they have a library of books written by someone called The Supreme Master Ching Hai - books with titles like “The Birds in My Life”, all with a picture of this lady on the cover. Well, I just googled her and have discovered that my lunch money has been funding a lunatic…that is not a complaint. Here are the highlights…

-Supreme Master Ching Hai is the self-titled founder and spiritual teacher of the Quan Yin Method with an estimated 20,000 followers world wide.

-Ching Hai was criticised in the Western press as “The Immaterial Girl: Part Buddha, Part Madonna,” and as “The Buddhist Martha Stewart … merchandizing mystic from Taiwan.

-In 1994, the local government in Vinh Long Province, Vietnam issued a declaration classifying Ching Hai’s operations as “religious propaganda” intended to “illegally oppose the government.”

-Ching Hai asked her followers to contribute money to the Clinton Presidential Legal Expense Trust. US$880,000 was raised. However, the donations were returned when the Trust found irregularities involving identical signatures and consecutively numbered money orders. They also found donors listed who did not have the financial means to give that amount of money.

-Ching Hai set up two front organisations to make awards for her, and manipulated a United States official into posing as the president of one in a public ceremony.

-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 her book The Key of Immediate Enlightenment, it is said that those who recite her name would become elevated.

-In 2004, an artificial island and 330-foot (100 m) long boardwalk created in the Biscayne National Park cost $1 million USD to remove after being illegally constructed by Ching Hai, known locally as a wealthy property owner under the pseudonym Celestia De Lamour.

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