We shouldn’t say that consciousness is born from the brain, because the opposite is true: the brain is born from consciousness.

Through producing your thoughts, speech, and actions, you create your environment. You always have the opportunity to arrange yourself and arrange your environment in such a way as to water the positive seeds in yourself. That is the secret to happiness.

If you are absorbed in deep reflection, you don’t see, you don’t hear, you don’t touch anymore. In that deep place of reflection, mind consciousness is working alone.

When we understand the interconnectedness of our bodies and our minds, the simple act of walking like the Buddha can feel supremely easy and pleasurable.

It is possible for you to walk with the feet of your mother. Poor mother, she didn’t have much opportunity to walk like this. You can say, “Mother, would you like to walk with me?” And then you walk with her, and your heart will fill with love.

there are deep concentrations when mind consciousness completely stops operating—there’s no thinking, no planning, nothing—yet store consciousness continues to operate. Deep walking meditation can be like this. Your body is moving and your store consciousness continues to be working, but you are not aware of it.

Thinking without a thinker. Feeling without a feeler. What is our anger without our “self”? This is the object of our meditation. All the fifty-one mental formations take place and manifest without a self behind them arranging for this to appear, and then for that to appear.

When you walk, who do you walk for? You can walk to get somewhere but you can also walk as a kind of meditative offering. It’s very nice to walk for your parents or for your grandparents who may not have known the practice of walking in mindfulness.

We don’t think, “Oh, there is a rock, therefore I have to step over it.” We just do it. That instinct of self-defense comes from store consciousness.