By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A reincarnation parable: a Tibetan monk chooses to run back toward the part of life strongest in memory instead of accepting heaven.
The page treats memory as a rival eternity. 'Running back' is not noble progress but chosen repetition: the self would rather re-enter its most charged earthly attachment than dissolve into final peace.
'RUNNING BACK': a prose parable in which a man of 'many cycles', at the end a 'Tiebetan monk', tells his holy monk he will return 'to the / part of his world strongest in his memory'; warned 'you will have to begin here the next / time', he answers 'I know; but I am not ready for Heaven yet.'
The parable sets memory against eternity and lets memory win: 'running back' is not progress but chosen repetition, a soul electing to re-enter its most charged earthly attachment rather than dissolve into final peace. The most holy monk states the cost - reincarnation reset to the beginning - and the man accepts the whole cycle of 'many youths' again for the sake of one remembered place. The flat closing confession, 'I am not ready for Heaven yet', is the poem's quiet center, and the parable is brief enough to pass as a joke, which is part of how it smuggles in a real refusal of transcendence. This reading tracks a 'mixed' OCR band, but the page is manually reviewed and the prose is clear; the source spelling 'Tiebetan' and the heavy semicolon punctuation are kept as written.