On Saturday April 3 I went to a conference sponsored by Supreme Master Ching Hai in UW’s Meany Hall. I found out about the conference from handbills and posters that were circulating around the neighborhood. It was advertised as a series of lectures on environmentalism, vegetarianism, sports fitness, and family fun on paper and on the advertised website, http://ecofamilyfunfair.com/. The website has a list of external links to http://www.SupremeMasterTV.com, so that is the connection to Ching Hai.
The program was scheduled for 1-6:30pm. I arrived around 1:30 and stayed for about forty-five minutes. Outside the lecture hall there were tables on three floors and the building seemed full of things to do. The strange thing was that very few people were there other than the people staffing the tables. Also, I could not help but notice that the persons at the tables were Asian (since Ching Hai was Taiwanese, I presume these people were Taiwanese), especially because when I approached them to talk about whatever they were displaying – pictures of environmental damage to water, health statistics, vegetable propaganda – many of them were not able to converse in English. There were food tables mixed with the info tables, and they had excellent vegetarian food, and they were giving it for free. So I had snacks as I walked around and let these nice Asian people speak in broken English to me asking for simple endorsement of the virtues of environmentalism, health, etc. My guess is that there was enough hot food for more than 500 people to eat a lot; it was piled high in insulated crates.
I started to wonder how this event came to be; it was apparent that this did not happen because of natural demand in my community because the people working there were not fit for the work and the lack of attendees indicated to me that this was not an event that local people had been wanting. Meany Hall is a music and dance performance hall which seats about 1000. It is a nice venue. When I went into the performance hall around 1:45, there were about 30 people there, and that includes 3 on stage speakers and 12 people who seemed to be doing tech. Of the tech people, two were recording video of the stage show and one was taking still pictures. Of the fifteen who seemed to be conference attendees, three were definitely asleep and to me they had the appearance of those who are homeless.
The lecture I visited was basic. It seemed to be targeted at people who did not know that pollution existed; it was dumbed down below the level I would expect of a television documentary and I could not imagine it being useful to the sort of savvy people who look for conferences at universities. The info booths outside the lecture, even considering the language barrier, were below that level. They had no science and no call to action.
Here is the list of rates in pdf for renting Meany Hall. My guess is that the money paid to the university for the rental and university staffing must have been about $3000 for the day. There were a lot of non-university event staff here; I would guess 90-110. There were games for children everywhere, and they had a prize point system were it was guaranteed that 3 children would win new bicycles on that day, and the bicycles were not cheap. I am sure that most of the staff were volunteers and probably Ching Hai followers, but still, when I imagine the value of the money and labor and time and that went into this event, I do not think I would be far off the mark to say that at least $8000 in cash got expended and if 100 people each contributed 10 hours valued at $10 per hour, then that is about $10,000 in value put into this event.
It is hard for me to say whether some of the Asian people wandering around not working were visitors or already associated with Ching Hai, but excluding those 10-20 people, in the time I was there I do not think that there were more than 40 people at this event and I doubt many of those stayed as long as I did. I saw no non-Asian children there, and about 10 Asian children who seemed to be associated with parents staffing the children’s games.
Today is Easter. Nandan told me that he went to a Christian church today and saw about 4,000 Hindus there. I do not mean to stereotype, but I think in general Hindus are more open to engaging in religions other than their own than members of any other religion. Still, Nandan told me this time as he has told me before that the Christian missionaries in his area pay people to attend their services and that the people know this relationship with the Christian church. What happens in Varanasi and other places in India is the foreign Christian church using vast funds to try to force proselytization in an area that has no natural demand for this.
I think that the same thing happened yesterday at the University with Supreme Master Ching Hai’s people. It is not a stretch for me to imagine an American telling about Easter in India without even knowing the local language, and not knowing that they appear to the Indians as these Taiwanese did to me.