Excerpted from an article in Lion's Roar.
SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: What does emptiness and compassion going hand in hand mean to you? Can you share a personal story of a time you felt the interplay between human warmth and emptiness? What helps you stay engaged while being rooted in emptiness?
Could the word emptiness be replaced with expansiveness??
it is a more wholesome word with the same characteristics explained here.
more full than empty...
What a healing integration of the two aspects of compassion, absolute and relative. I have often felt torn between, and thus lacking. This is a gift for meditation.
Emptiness and compassion do go hand in hand for me... any presence of emotion, be it anger or joy brings in elevated sense of response whereas when there is shunyata there is uniform sense of compassion towards all.
Emptiness of preconceived judgments and agendas fosters feeling compassion and human warmth. Being rooted in emptiness helps me stay truly engaged with the other rather than with my thinking or goals regarding the other.
Very nice articulation of what compassion might mean in our daily lives. From my reading of the article, it seems to me that seeing the boundryless-ness of me and you is the pre-condition for us to be able to practice relative compassion. Since relative compassion goes hand in hand with emptiness. The difficulty for me then is in treading the path. I guess 'Equanimity' or 'inner immobility' is in order. -:)