Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

were sitting on the ledge of my nook being bombarded by seagulls. The seagulls were attracted by the huge pile of cooked rice that lay between us on the ledge.
    “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.” Except that you really couldn’t see it done. One minute you had a handful of rice, the next a bushel.
    “Melchior says that it usually takes a lot longer for a yogi to learn to manipulate matter like this.”
    “How much longer?”
    “Thirty, forty years. Most of the time they pass on before they learn.”
    “So this is like the healing. Part of your, uh, legacy?”
    “This isn’t like the healing, Biff. This can be taught, given the time.”
    I tossed a handful of rice into the air for some seagulls. “Tell you what. Melchior obviously doesn’t like me, so he’s not going to teach me anything. Let’s trade knowledge.”

    I brought rice to Joshua, had him multiply it, then sold the surplus in the market, and eventually I started trading fish instead of rice because I could raise twenty rupees in fewer trips. But before that, I asked Joshua to come to town with me. We went to the market, which was thick with traders, haggling, making deals, exchanging cash for goods and services, and over on the side, a blind and legless beggar was making a killing on the change.
    “Scooter, I’d like you to meet my friend Joshua.”
    “My name’s not Scooter,” said the waif.
    A half hour later Scooter could see again and miraculously his severed legs had been regenerated.
    “You bastards!” said Scooter as he ran off on clean new pink feet.
    “Go with God,” Joshua said.
    “Now I guess we’ll see how easy it is to earn a living!” I shouted after the kid.
    “He didn’t seem very pleased,” said Josh.
    “He’s only learning to express himself. Forget him, others are suffering as well.”
    And so it came to pass, that Joshua of Nazareth moved among them, healing them and performing miracles, and all the little blind children of Nicobar did see again, and all the lame did stand up and walk.
    The little fuckers.

    And so the exchange of knowledge began: what I was learning from Kashmir and the Kama Sutra for what Joshua was learning from the holy man Melchior. Each morning, before I went to town and before Joshua went to learn from his guru, we met on the beach and shared ideas and breakfast. Usually some rice and a fresh fish roasted over the fire. We’d gone long enough without eating animal flesh, we had decided, despite what Melchior and Gaspar tried to teach us.
    “This ability to increase the bounty of food—imagine what we can do for the people of Israel, of the world.”
    “Yes, Josh, for it is written: ‘Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, but teach a man to be a fish and his friends eat for a week.’”
    “That is not written. Where is that written?”
    “Amphibians five-seven.”
    “There’s no friggin’ Amphibians in the Bible.”
    “Plague of frogs. Ha! Gotcha!”
    “How long’s it been since you had a beating?”
    “Please. You can’t hit anyone, you have to be at total peace with all creation so you can find Sparky the Wonder Spirit.”
    “The Divine Spark.”
    “Whatever, th—ouch. Oh great, and what am I supposed to do, hit the Messiah back?”
    “Turn the other cheek. Go ahead, turn it.”

    As I said, thus did the enlightened exchange of sacred and ancient teachings begin:
The Kama Sutra sayeth:
When a woman winds her small toes into the armpit hair of the man, and the man hops upon one foot, while supporting the woman on his lingam and a butter churn, then the achieved position is called “Rhinoceros Balancing a Jelly Donut.”
    “What’s a jelly donut?” Joshua asked.
    “I don’t know. It’s a Vedic term lost to antiquity, but it is said to have had great significance to the keepers of the law.”
    “Oh.”
The Katha Upanishad sayeth:
Beyond the senses are the objects,
and beyond the objects is the mind.
Beyond the mind is pure reason,
and beyond reason is the Spirit in man.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “You have to think about it, but it means that there’s something eternal in everyone.”
    “That’s swell. What’s with the guys on the bed of nails?”
    “A yogi must leave his body if he is going to experience the spiritual.”
    “So he leaves through the little holes in his back?”
    “Let’s start again.”
The Kama Sutra sayeth:
When a man applies wax from the carnuba bean to a woman’s yoni and buffs it with a