Hey, What D'ya Know? Buddhism Wins Best Religion Award! (Spoof!)

Did you know that religions officially competed against each other? Apparently so, and Buddhism WON! (Did you know that Buddhism is a religion?) SCORE! Is anybody listening? Don't let me disturb your meditation.The only problem, the contest holders can't find a Buddhist who is willing to accept the award! Read it here and silently applaud.

This seems like a clever hoax. The supposed organization who sponsors the award, The International Coalition for the Advancement of Religious and Spirituality (ICARUS) is nowhere to be found on the web. Any verifications out there?

Let's send little Emily Chen, eleven months old, to accept the award!

(Click on the photo to see it bigger.)

Comments

[Davidj]

Cool!

[Dorothy Su]

Amitofo Dharma Master Heng Sure. I searched for this news at urbanlegends.about.com and snopes.com and didn't find it there, so not sure if this news is true or not.

[jk5177]

Nice Pix.

[Kenneth]

I too received the news, forwarded to me by someone. Being a reporter, I did some fact-checking.

The acronym for the organization that gave out the award is ICARUS, a name from Greek mythology (the guy who flew too close to the sun), which seems a pretty silly symbol for a religious coalition. By the way, no one can find ICARUS' official Web site.

The name of the Burmese Buddhist monk cited in the story is "Bhante Ghurata Hanta," which is neither Burmese nor Sanskrit. (I should know, because I grew up in Burma.)

Tribune de Geneve, the paper that supposedly first published the news, is a French language paper--not English. Doing searches on "Buddhist" or "ICARUS" at the paper's site produced no story -- neither in French nor English -- matching the one we received.

I have enormous admiration for the Buddhist tradition, but the story above may be someone's attempt to have a few laughs--at our expense and at Buddhism's expense.

[Chetak N N]

Show Deep Gratitude Towards Buddhism Because It Is The Only Religion Which Is Of All......