Jeff Sherman: Docho Roshi, very often I feel your compassion. I don’t understand emptiness. I was wondering where compassion is in emptiness.
SR: Compassion will always be on some phenomenal world, which causes our attachment. Originally everything is empty. That is how our compassion arises. So compassion and somethingness and emptiness have the same quality. When we understand emptiness, we become compassionate toward something which exists in material or spiritual terms. So emptiness is not different from compassion. It is the source of compassion.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the photo. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 68-11-11 as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.