Complete Understanding

了了知, read ryōryōchi: knowing clearly, clearly. Three characters of plain Buddhist Chinese for knowing with nothing left over: the doubled 了了 is clearly, distinctly, and 知 is to know. The sutras use them for the Buddha's knowing, and the Tang hermit poet Hanshan for a plainer kind: when someone comes to curse me, I know it clearly, and though I make no answer, I come out ahead. In Zen they are the first half of a six-character line, knowing clearly, seeing clearly, which Mugaku Sogen, the Chinese master who founded Engakuji in Kamakura, used twice: once to open a poem about spring, and once in the verse he gave the regent Hōjō Tokimune as he took the tonsure on the day he died: knowing clearly, seeing clearly; the root of birth and death cut through with one stroke; wind and moon made new, left to your sons; on every branch, a spring without end. Several of the designs write the doubled 了 with the repeat mark. The English title is the house's own gloss; the literal is knowing clearly, clearly, and the doubling means clarity, not finishing.