Non-abidance


In Buddhism, especially the Chan traditions, non-abidance refers to being unfixed and without dwelling.
Some schools of Buddhism, especially the Mahāyāna, consider apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa to be the highest form of Buddhahood, more profound than pratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa, the ‘localized’, lesser form. According to Robert Buswell and Donald Lopez, apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa is the standard Mahayana view of Buddhahood, which enables them to freely return to samsara in order to help sentient beings, while still remaining in nirvāṇa and being a buddha via the usage of the nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya.

Term

Here, abide is used to translate pratiṣṭhita, meaning "to be contained in " or "situated", from the prefix prati- and ṣṭhita.
To translate pratiṣṭhita, Chinese Buddhists used zhù, literally "to reside, lodge, remain". Both wúsuǒzhù and wúzhù are used for apratiṣṭhita.

Sutras

The Diamond Sutra, a classic Buddhist text, is primarily concerned with the idea of non-abidance. The concept seems to have originated with the 1st-century Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, whose version of śūnyatā, or emptiness, entails that entities neither exist, nor do they not exist. The Platform Sutra relates how the spiritual patriarch Huineng attained sudden enlightenment after hearing his master Hongren reciting from the Diamond Sutra:
Huineng then responds that self-nature is intrinsically pure, cannot be generated or extinguished, is self-sufficient and capable of generating dharmas, though this response is absent in the older Dunhuang version of the text.
The scholar-monk Qisong also noted in his foreword of the Platform Sutra:
Non-abiding leads to prajñā, as it enables one to consider that worldly issues are empty, so there is no point in retaliation or disputes.