Although before we reach Buddhahood we don't have the simultaneous experience, the perfect union, of method and wisdom, Je Tsongkhapa uses this metaphor to remind us that nonetheless if we work at both aspects they will imbue each other constantly:
Deeds imbued with the philosophical view and wisdom imbued with method maybe understood by way of an analogy. When a mother stricken with grief at the death of her beloved child engages in conversation and other activities with others, the feelings she expresses do not eliminate the foprce of her grief. Yet not every feeling she expresses is necessarily grief. Similarly, if the wisdom that knows emptiness is very strong, even though the states of mind associated with giving, making obeisance, cirumbulating or reciting are not cognitions of emptiness, this still does not preclude you your being involved in them while being endowed with the potency or the force of the cognition of emptiness. For instance, at the start of a mediation session, if you first generate a very strong spirit of enlightenment, this spirit of enlightenment is manifestly there when you enter meditative equiposie in a concentration on emptiness. Yet this does not preclude this concentration's being imbued with the potency of the spirit of enlightenment
