了了知 ryōryōchi Complete Understanding

Knowing clearly, clearly: three characters of plain Buddhist Chinese for knowing clearly. The one sense is found in three registers, and the three characters carry all three. In the sutras it is the knowing of those who see the Buddha, and the Buddha's own knowing, complete and present. In the Tang poet Hanshan it is a man's plain knowing that he is being cursed. In Zen it opens a line of the master Mugaku Sogen's: knowing clearly, seeing clearly. Which of the three you see in the characters is yours.

Complete Understanding is our English for it, a fair gloss of the literal. Doubled, 了了 means clearly. In the cursive and Design styles the second 了 is written as a repeat mark.

The three characters are an ordinary Buddhist phrase, in Chinese scripture from a translation of 179 and in a Tang poem of Hanshan's; the six-character Zen line they open, knowing clearly, seeing clearly, is known first from the Chinese master Mugaku Sogen, who used it twice, the second time to open the verse he gave the regent Hōjō Tokimune at his tonsure in 1284, on the day Tokimune died.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 了了知.

Each design is Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's hand-brushed calligraphy of the word or phrase on this page, delivered as a PDF you can print. Every PDF includes the line art, so a tattoo artist or a craftsperson can work from the outline as well as the brushed image.

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