Master's Photography and the Noble Wilds

The most outstanding characteristic about Supreme Master Ching Hai’s photographic art is the tranquility and spiritual vibrance emanating from Her photos. Her compositions may seem casual, yet She accurately captures the rhythm of the colors and shades. In Her eyes, everything in the creation is full of life and God’s blessing. She even seems to be able to hear the grass singing, see the tiny flowers dancing, and capture the simplicity, pureness, and beauty in the hearts of the animals. Using colors and patterns found in nature, She paints a picture of the harmonious and beautiful love power pervading the universe. She has the magical power to wrap the intangible beauty of spirituality with a phantasmagoric dress of this world, and performs to Her utmost on this stage with Her poetic images. The way the Supreme Master Ching Hai composes Her photos focuses mainly on the harmony between the elements of yin and yang, buoyant and heavy, vertical and horizontal, and light and dark. She loves to discover the dynamic within the equilibrium. Amid rich layers of intertwining yin-yang and contrast, we can sense the constant tranquility and bliss flowing forth.

In The Noble Wilds, Supreme Master Ching Hai offers us a rare privilege to visit the special world of animals in the wild. From the quietude and love that encompasses the Amoura Village, to the radiant fauna and flora that abounds in Lake Jadeite, it leaves the reader entranced with nature’s grace as one is drawn into a heavenly realm to experience God’s blessing even while in the physical world.

“Love” is the keyword that penetrates permeates the “Noble Wilds”. The author’s words and photographs portrayed vividly the devotional love of the swan parents moment by moment from the long wait of the birth, making a cozy bed out of the father swan’s own feathers, till the excitement of the first flight of their babies, as well as how living beings in the wild life lovingly care between each other, between different species, and live in harmony. Many close-up angles of seemingly ordinary things captured a philosophical reflection with the extraordinary perspective of the author. Suddenly the intrinsic presence of those ‘small and out of the way beings’ starts to emit light. Throughout the entire book the respect toward the One encompassing all creations and everywhere around us is implied without pretense. The overwhelming aesthetic panoramas of this Amoura village makes the readers feel that they are also entranced and immersed in this network of love, they cannot hide from love and cannot overlook nor miss the fact that love is the true nature of this world, indeed of all creation, as One.