Watching Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison on PBS...weeping when Johnny Cash speaks of home. Writing this:

You are one thought away from enlightenment. What is the thought? It doesn’t matter. It could be about the greatest love of your life or your big toe. It just doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you know this. That you know it so thoroughly that you enter the vacuum of darkness that removing it brings.

Can you bear the darkness of living without that one thought?

This is not a Zen koan but an honest question. Can you experience the answer right now. And if you can’t, why not?

 Simple goodness resides in that darkness; something so primitive that it has never spoken the first word.

Can you be that basic? Can you tend to your needs as they arise. Can you stop lying to yourself by way of thought so that you can know what darkness really is?