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Raised a devout Roman Catholic in Quang Ngai, Vietnam, she left home at 22 to study in England, eventually becoming an interpreter for the Red Cross. At 30, she met and married a German doctor but left him, amicably she says, to become a Buddhist nun and pursue enlightenment in India. Her recognition as a spiritual leader came rather suddenly in 1982 when she tried to buy a copy of the Hindu sacred work the Bhagavad-Gita that she says she saw in a shop along the Ganges. The shopkeepers said there were none in stock; she insisted she had seen it. Then they discovered the book in a sealed box and began hailing her for the keenness of her third eye. She fled the sudden acclaim but eventually came to terms with her status. She claims her disciples number "maybe a million, maybe more."
In Taiwan she reportedly has 300,000 followers. However, when the government closed down her headquarters (it had been constructed without a license), the sect produced a membership list of only 804 names. That belies the 6,000 who appeared in Taiwan on Ching Hai Day in October 1995. At that ceremony, she wore queenly robes ("under orders from God," she says), riding a sedan chair carried by eight bearers to the cheers of "your royal majesty." Those followers are keeping faithfully silent as investigators go through the sect's records. One admitted, though, that "believers are not allowed to speak to outsiders without permission from above."
Other religious leaders in Taiwan are barely polite. The secretary-general of the Taoist Association says he has information that she has bought up vast tracts of land in Cambodia. Master Chinhsing, a Buddhist monk of Vietnamese origin who may have been Ching Hai's mentor, disapproves of her departure from the austere ways of Buddhist tradition. He has reportedly warned her never to identify herself as his former student.
The Supreme Master has been away from Taiwan for a while, traveling among disciples around the world. From that global perspective, the hubbub about the Clinton donation is rather pesky. "The Clinton money is nothing," she complains. "It's only $600,000, for God's sake!" Indeed, she says, "I'd forgotten all about it" until the press reported that the amount had been returned. And why shouldn't she help Clinton? "If I help a man who has some stress because of a flood, why would I not help a President who is stressed?" Says she: "If the American people would allow me, I would give him $2 million right now." Even so, Clinton couldn't touch it.
--Reported by Donald Shapiro/Taipei and James Willwerth/Alhambra