Jìxǐng Chèwù (Chinese: 際醒徹悟, c. 1741–1810) was a prominent Buddhist scholar and monk of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) who came to be recognized as the twelfth patriarch of Pure Land Buddhism.
The following year, he took the full monastic precepts at Xiuyun Temple under the Vinaya master Hengshi.
[3][4] In the winter of the 33rd year of Qianlong (1768), Jixing Chewu visited Guangtong Temple to study under Chan Master Cui Ru Chun.
[1] In 1800, Jixing Chewu retired to Zifu Temple (資福寺) on Mount Hongluo (Hebei), intending to live a secluded life.
However, his teachings attracted numerous followers, leading him to rebuild the temple as a center for communal Pure Land practice.
He became widely revered and earned the title "Hongluo Chewu," with contemporaries praising him as the foremost promoter of the Pure Land tradition in the realm.
Jixing Chewu was honored as the twelfth patriarch of the Pure Land School by later figures like Yinguang.
[1] He argues that this feature of the Pure Land dharma gate is one of its advantages over other more complex methods that require rituals.
Thus, Chewu writes that the Pure Land practitioner does not need to confess their past deeds, since "when the mind reaches the point of reciting the Buddha's name just once, one is able to extinguish the faults [accumulated over] 8,000,000,000 kalpas.
[1] In some places, Chewu clearly means oral recitation, but in others he describes the practice as a mental recollection.
[1] However, Chewu also held that if one's mind turned away from thoughts of the Buddha, one could regress from one's faithful focus on the pure land and once again become entangled with defilements.
If one puts aside pure karma in favor of the small results of the provisional vehicles, this is also an empty passage of days and nights.
"[1] For Chewu, this means that all reality is non-dual with the "true mind", the pure foundation consciousness (alaya) and that all phenomena are interconnected and interfused.
This is the foundation for the doctrine of sympathetic resonance, or ganying, which Chewu and many other Pure land authors rely on to explain how nianfo works.
[1] This account of how nianfo works is Chewu's main original contribution to Pure Land Buddhism.