Swami Sri Yogurt-n-Anda’s Triple Happiness Raisin Secret

September 25, 2004

"Swami Sri Yogurt-n-Anda’s Triple Happiness Raisin Secret"

Hail, peaceful followers of the infinite pool gathering! I, disciple Ten Vidi come to you with a message of hope and tranquility, special for you, prepared by the meditations and incense of the most holy monks of St. Rama Llama Ding Dong.

Our most holy swami Yogurt-n-anda has spent the last twelve years meditating on raisins, and has come to understand a basic truth about dietary purity and how best to prepare your digestive system to convey you quicker to ultimate enlightenment.

The following is my humble translation of his truth writings, taken directly from the vellum scroll on which he inscribed it. I pray for your patience in reading my translation as I am a simple white man who the holy monks lowered themselves to accept- I am a native English speaker and have been forced to learn Hindi and Sanskrit from scraps of paper, thrown out MacDonald’s bags, and the cheap American romance novels (translated into Hindi) that the monks here read. I begged them for the money to take a correspondence course on Sanskrit, but they beat me with big sticks, locked me in the basement, and laughed for three days straight. That’s when I learned my first big spiritual lesson: never ask monks for money. Nonetheless, in college I was forced to read James Joyce and Allen Ginsberg, so I had a lot of experience making sense of nonsense, which is why I was able to learn Sanskrit and Hindi by myself. But occasionally I wonder if my translations are correct. Boy it’s a good thing these monks can’t read English, or I’d probably be in the basement again! Well I better get to it before they decide I’m taking too long. Here are the words of the great, holy, humble, enlightened swami sri yogurt-n-anda:

Greetings earth people and shame on you for being eaters of the foul fowl, the stupid cow, the dirty pig. I love you so much, the universe loves me so and I am the universe so I love you. You have befouled your innards with the meat of idiot animals. I have found a new way, a better way, given to me by the loving universe. I have had much time to consider the finest fruit ever to manifest in this plane of reality, the raisin. As you know, all is energy, down to the deepest subatomic level- the electron, the proton, even the quark are very very tiny expressions of love. And on a bigger level, for us on this planet earth, the sun is the biggest energy, the greatest love we know. It loves one half of the earth all day long, loving the soil, the worms, the plants, the trees, the fish and birds, and even us human bags of bones. And as you know, the raisin could not be without the sun. Not only does the sun go into the growing of the grape, but it goes in again when the grape dries into a raisin. So it contains double the energy and love of other food sources, which only grow once. And if you eat animals, you are eating second-hand love. The raisin is not only first-hand, it is double love, double happiness. So now that you know the truth, let me caution you about this crazy Atkins diet fad I hear so many of you are following. First you must know that protein can be ok, if it is first-hand vegetable love protein, but not the idiot animal protein. But there is a bigger issue for you to consider. Not only is the raisin double the love of other foods, but it has the power of carb within it, one of the only natural ways to defeat karma. You know the old saying, a carb a day keeps the karma away? It’s a famous village saying in the north of Pakistan, or it was before Ghandi. Everything is crazy now since that guy came. But the raisin gives me clarity, and when I put it in my mouth, I smile. That’s all I need to know- the smile test. More than that, I find that I can do more yoga if all I eat is raisins, and more yoga means more access to universal truth, and more happiness, so that means raisins are triple happiness. But about this Atkins- if you say it really fast over and over, it sounds like “I Can’t” which is a very negative thing to think, and if you have this negative mantra in your head even subconsciously while you eat idiot animals, you are what you eat and your mind will be like a cow’s, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your whole life went straight to hell in a handbasket. But don’t worry- if you’ve fallen into this Atkins I Can’t thing, you can get out of the downward spiral with fasting and colon cleansing. Several of the monks here used to be “I Can’ts” and they felt much better after 6 months of fasting and colon cleansing. They went on a very special fast that the raisins taught me. All they ate was cheezits and they drank a lot of green tea. Plus all the colon cleanses were done with Starbuck’s Sumatra coffee - and let me tell you that is the only place in your body fit for Sumatra coffee - and they were totally different guys after that. They lost about 20 lbs and forgot their names, which was ok because we give all the monks new names here. So then we taught new devotees the history of raisins, which we’ve had in the East a lot longer than you have. California raisins, you make me laugh! Your foolish crusading knights stole our raisins in the 11th century but they didn’t take with them the wisdom of raisins. They continued to eat all manner of idiot meat and considered raisins a mere snack. That’s like eating dung and desserting on strawberries! Like mostly watching reality TV and only occasionally going to the Pulse of Oriental Medicine website! Insane! Anyway, the devotees were fascinated to find out how to make and store and chop raisins, and good thing too, because our previous raisin-preparing monks had run away from the monastery to live closer to the MacDonald’s in New Delhi, so our new devotees had nothing to do but make and store and chop raisins all day long, and that’s what they’ve been doing for months now. Anyway, in summary, raisins are triple happiness, catalyze enlightenment, and keep you really darned regular, so eat more of them, give up everything else, and we need some new raisin racks and a lot more napkins, so send us some money here at the Sun Dried Swami Monastery, c/o Sony India Pvt Ltd, Nagpur, India.

Swami Yogurt-n-Anda’s Raisin Constipation Pose

There you have it, a pure translation of super ecstatic truth from a living master. Just translating these words makes me feel closer to the source of all love and energy and truth. I hope you have appreciated our monthly newsletter update from the monastery. I look forward to writing you again, and if you want, please feel free to write us here. I get pretty lonely because most of the other monks don’t speak English, and they never let me watch TV with them. But please, don’t send anymore livestock, at least not in boxes. Someone sent us what I think was at one time a rooster before the Indian postal service and the summer heat got to it. And I couldn’t eat any raisins for days after that. But if you have anything for diarrhea, I’d really appreciate it. I think it’s all the raisins. Well, anyway, peace and blessings, and keep your face toward the sun!

Yours, Ten Vidi, least of all monks, Sun Dried Swami Monastery.