Chèwù 徹悟 (1741–1810)
The late-Qīng Pure Land patriarch conventionally enumerated as the Twelfth Patriarch (shí’èrzǔ 十二祖) of the orthodox Chinese Pure Land lineage. Religious name Jìxǐng 際醒, sobriquet Chèwù 徹悟 (“Penetrating Awakening”), self-designation Nètáng lǎorén 訥堂老人 / Nèdàorén 訥道人 (“Old Man of the Inarticulate Hall”). Lay surname Mǎ 馬, native of Fēngrùn 豐潤 in Zhílì 直隸 (modern Hébei).
He took monastic ordination in his youth and trained first in the jiàoxià 教下 (doctrinal-school) traditions: the Yuánjué jīng 圓覺經, then the Tiāntái sāndàbù 天台三大部 and the Léngyán 楞嚴 and Jīngāng 金剛 corpus. Subsequently he turned to Línjì Chán 臨濟禪 under Cuìrú 粹如 and Sōngcuì 松萃, becoming a recognised dharma-heir. In Qiánlóng guǐsì 乾隆癸巳 (1773) he became abbot of Guǎngtōngsì 廣通寺 in Beijing, where he led Chán practice for some fifteen years. Around 1787, on account of physical illness and meditation on the Pure Land precedents of Mǎmíng 馬鳴, Lóngshù 龍樹, Zhìzhě 智者, 延壽 Yánshòu, 楚石 Chǔshí, and 袾宏 Liánchí Zhūhóng, he turned definitively from cānchán to niànfó practice. He destroyed his Chán manuscripts; some surviving fragments and his subsequent Pure Land sermons were assembled by disciples into the Chèwù chánshī yǔlù KR6p0101 (X1182).
He served successively as abbot of Juéshēngsì 覺生寺 and Zīfúsì 資福寺 in the Beijing region. In his late years he retired to Hóngluóshān 紅螺山 (north of Beijing), whence the alternate sobriquet Hóngluó Chèwù 紅螺徹悟. He died at Hóngluóshān on the second day of the twelfth month of Jiāqìng 14 (= 17 January 1810 by Western reckoning; some sources give Jiāqìng 15 / 1810). His chief teaching is captured in the famous slogan 真為生死，發菩提心，以深信願，持佛名號 (“for the sake of life-and-death, raise the bodhi mind, with deep faith and vows, hold to the Buddha’s name”) — the core formulation that the Republican-era Pure Land master Yìnguāng 印光 (1861–1940) explicitly inherited and made the cornerstone of modern Chinese Pure Land pastoral teaching. The Niànfó qiétuó 念佛伽陀 (100 doctrinal gāthās, included in the Yǔlù) remained a continuously-printed devotional text from the Jiāqìng era to the present.