"Insight into emptiness and compassion for the world are two sides of the same coin.  To experience ourselves and the world as interactive processes rather than aggregates of discrete things undermines both habitual ways of perceiving the world as well as habitual feelings about it.  Meditative discipline is vital to dharma practice precisely because it leads us beyond the realm of ideas to that of felt-experience.  Understanding the philosophy of emptiness is not enough.  The ideas need to be translated through meditation into the wordless language of feeling in order to loosen those emotional knots that keep us locked in a spasm of self-preoccupation."

--Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs