What This Concept Is About
To the ordinary reader, the two characters 進退 (jìntuì, "advance and retreat") sound like the advance and retreat of marching, or of handling affairs — strike when one should strike, hold back when one should hold back. That is its mundane meaning. Set within the Buddhist Dharma, 進退 carries three deeper, finer layers of meaning, interwoven with one another to form a complete coordinate system for practice.
First layer: advance and retreat on the path — practicing and not practicing.
This is the most direct sense of 進退. Practice does indeed advance and retreat. From the first arisal of the resolve (初發心, prathamacittotpāda) to the attainment of buddhahood (成佛), a bodhisattva (菩薩) passes through fifty-two stages (五十二階位): the ten faiths (十信, daśa śraddhā), the ten abodes (十住, daśa vihāra), the ten practices (十行, daśa caryā), the ten dedications (十迴向, daśa pariṇāmanā), the ten grounds (十地, daśa bhūmi), equal enlightenment (等覺, samayabhisambodhi), and marvelous enlightenment (妙覺). In the descriptions of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (《華嚴經》) and other classics, every crossing from one stage to the next is accompanied by "advance" — the augmentation of merit (功德, puṇya), wisdom (智慧, prajñā), and meditative stability (定力); while every pause or slip on a stage is called "retrogression" (退轉, avaivartana).
The Avataṃsaka Sūtra contains a widely circulated description: when a bodhisattva on the first ground (初地菩薩) — the Ground of Joy (歡喜地, pramuditā-bhūmi) — has just realized that ground and sees how immeasurably distant the Buddha-ground (佛地, buddha-bhūmi) still is, a peculiar "terror" (恐怖, bhaya) arises in the mind — not fear of external enemies, but the fear that one might fall back (退墮), slip from the stage already attained. This terror is not a failure of practice; on the contrary, it is precisely this deep awareness of "retreat" that in turn becomes the cause and condition for the bodhisattva's ever more vigorous exertion.
This layer of advance-and-retreat tells us: practice is not linear. It is not a matter of arousing the resolve once, doing a stretch of work, and then riding upward all the way. It is wavelike — advance three steps, retreat two; then advance four, retreat one. Today the mind is clear, tomorrow restless; this month the sūtras are flavorful, next month they feel tedious; three, five years of steady work, and suddenly a single sentence knocks you back to square one — all of these are "retreat." "Retreat" is not failure, but it needs to be faced squarely, not papered over.
Second layer: advance and retreat in the mind — grasping and letting go.
Finer than advance and retreat on the path is advance and retreat at the level of thought. Every thought that arises has two directions: it either "advances" — grasping, reaching out (攀緣, ālambana), chasing; or it "retreats" — rejecting, pushing away, dodging.
In the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch (《六祖壇經》), Master Huineng (慧能) teaches people to "not grasp and not reject all dharmas" (於一切法不取不捨). "Not grasping" is retreat — not letting a thought seize anything; "not rejecting" is advance — not pushing anything away. On the surface, this looks like the middle way of "neither advancing nor retreating." But the Platform Sūtra's meaning runs deeper: not-grasping and not-rejecting are not two deeds but two faces of the same deed. When the mind truly puts down clinging, it neither advances nor retreats; it is simply 如如不動 (tathatā, "unmoved in thusness").
Linji Yixuan's (臨濟義玄) "Four Distinctions" (四料簡, sì liào jiǎn) also speak of advance and retreat on this level — "taking away the person, not taking away the environment" (奪人不奪境), "taking away the environment, not taking away the person" (奪境不奪人), "taking away both person and environment" (人境俱奪), and "taking away neither person nor environment" (人境俱不奪). On the surface these look like four "strategies of advance and retreat," but in fact they say: for sentient beings of differing capacities (根機, indriya), the Chan master must be able to move freely between "advance" (taking away, breaking) and "retreat" (not taking away, preserving), without getting stuck on either side.
This layer of advance-and-retreat is closer to every second of our lives than the first layer — it is not advance and retreat on the path of cultivation, but advance and retreat in every single thought.
Third layer: advance and retreat in responding to circumstances — meeting people and handling things.
Advance and retreat in "responding to circumstances" (應機) is most commonly seen between Chan master and student. When a student comes to ask about the Dharma, should the master "advance" or "retreat"? Should he shout, strike, press the question — or stay silent and let the student work it out himself?
Yunmen Wenyan's (雲門文偃) "Three Statements of Yunmen" (雲門三句) — "covering heaven and earth" (函蓋乾坤), "cutting off all streams" (截斷眾流), and "following the waves and riding the currents" (隨波逐浪) — are in fact three "postures of advance and retreat": "covering heaven and earth" is a retreat that contains everything — no words, no judgments; "cutting off all streams" is an advance that cuts everything off — one stroke of the knife, no room for negotiation; "following the waves and riding the currents" is advancing and retreating at ease — advance when it is time to advance, retreat when it is time to retreat; it appears to have no direction of its own, yet everywhere it is exactly right.
Zhaozhou Congshen's (趙州從諗) famous "Go drink some tea" (吃茶去) is likewise a "demonstration of advance and retreat" — a visitor comes to ask about Chan; Zhaozhou neither retreats (he does not hand you an answer to "what is Chan") nor advances (he does not push you back to figure it out yourself); rather, advance and retreat occur at the same moment: you have come, so go drink some tea.
Advance and retreat in responding to circumstances is, in essence, 無我 (anātman, "no-self") — there is no "I" that needs to advance or retreat, and therefore one can respond to conditions freely.
The relationship among the three layers.
These three layers are not isolated. A person with genuine practice has all three connected: no retrogression on the path (first layer), no grasping and no rejecting in thought (second layer), and the ability to advance and retreat in meeting people and handling things (third layer). What they share is "not being stuck" — whether advancing or retreating, one is not pushed along by inertia, fear, or habitual tendencies.
And true liberation is not "never retreating" — one does not retreat because there is nothing to retreat from; nor is it "fierce brave effort" — one advances because there is no need to advance. To be at ease in advance and retreat — this is called 解脫 (vimokṣa, "liberation").
A Walkthrough in Daily Life
Pulling advance-and-retreat back from the path of cultivation into the daily life of contemporary people, the most accessible and most frequent scenes are often not in the meditation hall, but in those tiny, barely noticeable moments.
Scenario one: on the crowded morning metro.
You are squeezed by the train door. A backpacker pushes in and bumps into you. Your first thought arises — this is "advance": irritation, blame, the urge to glare back, the urge to say "what are you shoving for." It wants to move forward, to seize this object of "he bumped me," and turn it into a problem.
If you actually glare back, or actually voice a complaint, the thought has "advanced" into an action. If, the instant the thought arises, you notice its force — "huh, what am I grasping at?" — then it may naturally "retreat."
But here one must be careful: the easiest place to go wrong is to mistake "retreat" for "suppression." You tell yourself "forget it, I won't bother with him" — it looks like a step back, but this "forget it" is itself an exertion — you are pressing something down. Pressing down is another kind of "advance."
True retreat is: the thought arises, you see it, you neither follow it nor press it down. It naturally fades. This is neither advance nor retreat — it is 不住 (apratiṣṭhita, "not dwelling").
Scenario two: a colleague takes credit for your work.
You worked on a proposal for three months, and in the end the person who presents it is not you. At this moment, the "advancing" thoughts are to argue, to explain, to be angry — "I made this." Its momentum is strong, because it touches the sense of self-worth.
The "retreating" thought follows too: let it go, go with conditions (隨緣, suí yuán), arguing is useless. But if this "retreat" is not true letting go but endurance, then it is still advance — merely replaying the script of injustice over and over in the mind.
The Platform Sūtra's "not grasping, not rejecting" becomes extraordinarily concrete at this point: not grasping at this credit ("not grasping" is retreat — not letting the inflated self seize it), and not rejecting this pain of being overlooked ("not rejecting" is advance — not pretending that nothing happened). Acknowledge that you are genuinely wronged, genuinely upset, and then do not let that upset become action. The space in between — that is the true 如如不動.
Scenario three: the child does not want to do homework.
This is the parent's advance-retreat dilemma. Advance: be a little stricter, explain the reasoning once more, punish him by copying it three times. Retreat: forget it, we will talk about it tomorrow; do not ruin the relationship.
Many parents get stuck in the "dilemma of advance and retreat" (進退兩難) — these four characters are themselves a state of being trapped. In fact, the dilemma is not because "advance" is wrong or "retreat" is wrong, but because the parent has a hidden "I" in it — "I" want to be a good parent, "I" want the child to grow up in my way. The moment this "I" moves, it is either advance ("I must deal with this") or retreat ("I cannot deal with this anymore").
Yunmen's "covering heaven and earth" works especially well here: first, do not move. Not giving up, not indifference, but truly first letting the whole situation be contained — the fact that the child does not want to do homework, your own anxiety, the child's resistance — all of it is first "seen," without rushing to advance or retreat. When that "I" stops moving, advance and retreat naturally find their proper measure.
Scenario four: two hours on the phone.
You only meant to check the time, but two hours have passed and the phone is still in your hand.
"Advance" is that tugging feeling of "one more post," "next video," "I must finish replying to this conversation." It keeps shouting "continue, continue" in your mind. "Retreat" is the voice of "okay, time to put it down." But this voice is often too weak, crushed by the inertia of "advance."
The walkthrough here is: when you finally put down the phone, notice the inner state at that moment — is it guilt ("I wasted two more hours"), relief ("finally stopped"), or calm? Guilt is a backward advance (internal attrition); relief is a backward retreat (finally escaped); calm is that "not dwelling" — neither advance nor retreat, just returning to the present moment.
The easiest thing to misjudge is mistaking "calm" for "numbness." Numbness is feeling nothing; calm is feeling everything, without clinging.
Why Contemporary People Need It
The most universal spiritual predicament of contemporary people can be summed up in one word — 卡住 (kǎ zhù, "stuck").
We get stuck in our careers, stuck in relationships, stuck in self-growth, stuck in emotions. The appearance of being stuck may differ, but there is a common structure: forced to choose between advance and retreat — and unable to choose.
Advance and retreat — this is the naming of that either-or predicament.
The two-way pressure of contemporary life.
In past eras, the pressure pushing people to "advance" was dominant — you had to strive, you had to fight, you had to get ahead. But contemporary society adds a new pressure: the pressure to "retreat" — you must let go, you must be 佛系 (fó xì, "Buddha-like" nonchalance), you must practice self-care, you must 斷捨離 (duàn shě lí, "cut, discard, separate" — the decluttering way). The result is that we are pulled by two opposing forces at once, and both sides carry a moral halo. One side says "you must be enterprising," the other says "you must see through things." This is one of the most common forms of mental attrition in contemporary life.
Understanding advance and retreat is to let us see: these two forces are actually one structure — both are 我執 (ātmagrāha, "clinging to self") at work. One "I" grasps ("I want to succeed"), another "I" pushes away ("I want to let go"). Both "I"s are still there, merely facing opposite directions. True liberation is not choosing one of them, but seeing that "I" itself.
The special challenge of the AI and algorithm era.
Contemporary attention is designed by almost every app to make you "advance and not be able to stop." The algorithm's "advance" is an extremely refined "advance" — it does not even let you realize you are being pulled along. When you want to "retreat" (put down the phone, stop consuming), the algorithm gives you one more reason to "wait a little longer."
This is the contemporary advance-retreat predicament: the force of advance is industrial-grade, while the force of retreat is often merely personal will. Personal will against industrial-grade temptation does not have good odds. That is why the wisdom of "neither advancing nor retreating" is especially important in this era — not opposing with willpower (that is still "advance"), but cultivating a capacity not to be pulled away (that is the true "retreat"). Quitting the phone is not "I must quit"; quitting the phone is "I clearly know what I am doing."
What neuroscience can tell us (and what it cannot tell us).
The brain's default mode network (DMN) automatically activates when we settle down, generating self-referential thoughts — this is one of the physiological bases of "advance-and-retreat thoughts." We need not be anxious about the existence of these thoughts; it is a normal function of the brain.
But some studies point out that an overactive DMN is closely related to rumination (反芻思維), anxiety, and self-criticism. These so-called "negative" states are, in essence, the DMN playing its "advance-retreat game" — endlessly grasping at the past and rehearsing the future.
The "awareness without following" of thoughts in 禪修 (chán xiū, "meditation practice") is studied in neuroscience as "meta-awareness" (元覺察). There is preliminary evidence that regular meditation practice can modulate DMN activity, making it easier for a person to step out of rumination. But here one must avoid a common misreading: neuroscience has not proven that meditation "eliminates" thoughts; it changes the person's relationship with thoughts — from being pushed around by thoughts to seeing thoughts arise. This change has affinities with the meaning of "neither advancing nor retreating," but it is not identical. We cannot say "science has proven Zen." That would be another narrowing of the concept of advance and retreat — flattening a deeply internal matter of practice into a neural mechanism.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Misreading one: "advance and retreat" means the "moderation" of "advancing and retreating with measure."
Many people, on hearing "advance and retreat," immediately react with "advancing and retreating with measure" (進退有度), "advancing and retreating appropriately" (進退得宜), "knowing when to advance and when to retreat." This is to reduce the Buddhist concept of advance and retreat to a mundane art of dealing with the world.
The mundane "advancing and retreating with measure" still has an "I" making the judgment — whether "I" should advance or retreat; this "I" is the supreme arbiter. The Buddhist advance and retreat ultimately dissolves this "I." When the "I" dissolves, advance and retreat are no longer "strategies" but natural expression — do what needs to be done, and put it down when it is done. Thus "advancing and retreating with measure" is the entry gate to advance and retreat, not its ultimate end.
Misreading two: "non-retreat" means "never retreating, ever."
Non-retrogression (不退轉, avaivartika) is a bodhisattva's attainment — it means one will not fall from the stage already reached. But many practitioners understand "non-retreat" as "never regressing," "ever vigorous," "always positive." This turns dynamic advance-and-retreat into something static.
In fact, even a first-ground bodhisattva experiences "terror" — he too fears his own retrogression. This fear is not failure but a kind of acuity. To be able to advance and retreat, to rise and fall, is itself the maturity of practice. Forcing oneself to "never retreat" is itself a clinging — clinging to that state of "never retreating."
Misreading three: "retreat" means "letting go," "seeing through," "going with conditions."
This is the trap contemporary people most easily fall into. "I have already let it go," "I have already seen through it," "let everything go with conditions" — these all sound very Buddha-like, but they are often another kind of "advance" — using the posture of "letting go" to cover up the fact that one has not truly let go.
True "retreat" is never the result of exertion. When you exert yourself to "let go," that "exertion" is itself grasping. When you tell yourself "I have already seen through it," that "already" is a new clinging.
How do you test whether a "retreat" is real or fake? Very simply: when you say "I have let it go," see whether you can still recall the matter without agitation. If you can, you have truly retreated a step; if you cannot, you are still stuck in the "advance" loop.
Misreading four: "neither advancing nor retreating" means "doing nothing."
This is the most misunderstood phrase. Many people think "neither advancing nor retreating" means lying flat, not striving, not participating. It is precisely the opposite — a person of "neither advancing nor retreating" can do many things; only, when doing them, there is no exertion of "I must do this."
The Sixth Patriarch Huineng was illiterate, yet he lectured on the Nirvāṇa Sūtra (《涅槃經》); Bodhidharma (達摩, Dámó) faced a wall for nine years; generations of Chan masters struck students with their staffs and pressed them toward awakening (開悟, kāi wù) — none of this is "doing nothing." But when they did these things, there was no "I" inside struggling and exerting. So "neither advancing nor retreating" is not the cessation of action, but the cessation of that "I" behind action.
Misreading five: "advance and retreat" is only about "progress" and "regress" in cultivation.
This is a literal reading. The core of advance and retreat in the Buddhist Dharma is not the rise and fall of stages on the cultivation path, but the grasping-and-rejecting of thought and the measure of responding to circumstances. Narrowing it to "cultivation progress" misses its finest, most life-adjacent part.
In fact, whether you "advance" or "retreat" today has no necessary connection to your stage on the path. A senior Chan master may at this very moment have a powerful "advancing" thought arise in the mind (wanting to seize some state, some experience), while a beginner may at this very moment be extremely "retreating" (completely unwilling to do anything). Advance and retreat are not outside; they are only in this present thought.
Advance and retreat do not teach us how to make choices in life; they teach us to see — behind every choice, that "I" making the choice: is it truly free, or is it being dragged along by 習氣 (vāsanā, "habitual tendencies")? To be able to advance is 精進 (vīrya, "vigorous effort"); to be able to retreat is letting go; to be able to neither advance nor retreat is 見性 (jiàn xìng, "seeing one's nature"). These three levels are not a ladder; they are three faces of the same fact. When in any single moment of life we can simultaneously perceive these three faces — this advancing mind, that mind wanting to let go, and the awareness watching them both — then in that moment, whatever choice we make, that choice is 清淨 (viśuddha, "pure").