了了知 ryōryōchi Complete Understanding
This is a philological study of the Zen phrase 了了知 (ryōryōchi), knowing clearly, clearly. It traces the three characters from Buddhist Chinese of the fifth century and a Tang poem of 寒山's through the Zen line 無学祖元 built from them and gave twice, once in a spring verse and once as the tonsure poem for the dying regent 北条時宗 in 1284, and shows that the catalogue's coined by Zen Master Inzan Ien in the eighteenth century has no witness at all.
Abstract
了了知, ryōryōchi, knowing clearly, clearly, is plain Buddhist Chinese for knowing without residue, in the great commentaries of the fifth century and in a Tang poem of Hanshan 寒山's own voice. In the Zen records it joins into a six-character line, 了了知了了見, which Mugaku Sogen 無学祖元 used twice in the 1280s — once in a spring verse, and once as the poem he gave the regent Hōjō Tokimune 北条時宗 on the day Tokimune took the tonsure and died, in 1284. The catalogue's claim that the phrase was coined by Zen Master Inzan Ien (1754–1817) has no witness at all: the characters are five centuries older than he, and nothing connects him to them.
Overview
The sense. One sense, in three registers. In the sutras, the Buddha's knowing, complete and present; in Hanshan, a man's plain knowing that he is being cursed; in Zen, from Huike 慧可's answer to Sogen's verse, the knowing that is not annihilation and not delusion, clear because there is nothing in it to be unclear about. The design's three characters carry all three, and the tonsure verse carries the last.
The words. Three characters. 了了 is a doubled adverb, clearly, distinctly, resolved, in Chinese from the third century and in Japanese from the 栄花物語, where a woman sees the Buddha and hears the law, clearly and distinctly [1]; 知 is to know. The Zen records write the doubling as 了了 or 了々 without distinction, and so do Eri's designs: in the block and semi-cursive styles she writes the two characters in full, as the 1922 collected edition does, and in the cursive and Design styles the second is a single short stroke, the repeat mark. The three characters are not a term of art. They are the plain Buddhist Chinese for knowing without residue, and they head a family: 了了常知, knowing clearly and always, which is what the Second Patriarch said to Bodhidharma 達磨; 了了見, seeing clearly, which is the 証道歌's; 了了分明, clear and distinct, the commonest of all in the canon; and 了了知了了見, knowing clearly, seeing clearly, the six-character line the founder of 円覚寺 used twice, from which the design takes its first half. The page's alternative, Finally, Finally, Understanding, reads 了 as to finish, which it also means, but no witness reads the doubled word that way. Complete Understanding is a fair gloss.
The text in English. None known. The Internet Archive's full-text index has no book with the romaji [2], and the English histories that tell of Tokimune's tonsure do not render the verse in what was seen of them [3].
The historical record
5th century to 1143. The 大智度論, and the 翻譯名義集 after it. The Buddha-eye, says the great commentary on the Perfection of Wisdom, is knowing every dharma clearly, as present before one, 佛眼名一切法現前了了知 [4]; and the Song dictionary of Buddhist terms explains the name Buddha by the same three characters: 菩提樹下了了知故名佛, because beneath the bodhi tree he knew clearly, he is called the Awakened [5].
Tang. Hanshan, a poem, read at the 全唐詩 and in a print of 1618. The hermit poet of 天台 remembers walking back to 国清寺 after twenty years and being called a fool by everyone in it: 我尚自不識，是伊爭得知。低頭不用問，問得復何為。有人來罵我，分明了了知。雖然不應對，卻是得便宜, I do not even know myself; how should they know me? I bow my head and do not ask; what would asking gain? When someone comes to curse me, I know it clearly, distinctly; though I make no answer, I come out ahead [6]. The three characters as ordinary speech, in the mouth of the poet every Zen monk read.
1004, and the early eighth century. The two halves of the Zen line. Bodhidharma asks Huike how he can tell that his stilled mind is not annihilation. 可曰。了了常知故。言之不可及。師曰。此是諸佛所傳心體。更勿疑也, "Because it knows, clearly and always; words cannot reach it." "This is the mind-essence all the Buddhas have transmitted. Doubt it no more" [7]. And Yongjia 永嘉's song of enlightenment: 了了見無一物。亦無人亦無佛。大千沙界海中漚, seeing clearly there is not one thing, no person and no Buddha; the worlds of the great chiliocosm are foam on the sea [8]. A thirteenth-century record adds the verb in a monk's mouth: Weishan 潙山 tells Yangshan 仰山 a dream and washes his face, and Xiangyan 香嚴, who comes in afterward and was not in the room, says 某甲在下面，了了知得, I was below, and knew it clearly [9].
1280s, Mugaku Sogen. The Chinese master whom Tokimune brought to Kamakura in 1279 joined the two halves and used the six characters twice. Once at a 上堂, where they open a spring poem: 了了知了了見、綠樹囀嬌鶯、畫梁鳴乳燕、五陵公子踏青行、卻把青羅扇遮面, knowing clearly, seeing clearly; in the green trees the warblers sing, in the painted beams the young swallows cry; the young lords of the five tombs walk out on the spring grass, and hide their faces behind fans of blue silk [10]. And once, on the fourth day of the fourth month of 弘安 7 (1284), when the regent Hōjō Tokimune, in his last illness, took the tonsure from him with fifty-four of his household following the same day: 了了知了了見。生滅根源一刀截斷。斬新風月付兒孫。枝枝葉葉無邊春, knowing clearly, seeing clearly; the root of birth and death cut through with one stroke of the blade; wind and moon made new, left to your sons and grandsons; on every branch, on every leaf, a spring without end [11]. Tokimune died that day. The founder of 円覚寺 gave the verse to the man who had built it for him, and its first line is the design. A 1930 annotator reads the line as the point at which knowing is seen as delusion and seeing is seen.
1754–1817, Inzan Ien 隠山惟琰, and the page. The catalogue says the phrase was coined by Zen Master Inzan Ien and that the designs are inspired by Inzan's original calligraphy. Inzan was a Rinzai master of Hakuin 白隠's line, born in 越前, trained under 月船, abbot of 梅泉寺 in 美濃, founder of one of the two lines of modern Rinzai training [12]; the National Diet Library's index has twenty-two notices of his life, none with the three characters; the Internet Archive has nothing; the dealers who sell his calligraphy list circles and other phrases [13]. If a scroll of his with the three characters exists, he brushed a line five centuries old; he did not coin it.
What is not a source. Inzan Ien is not the source; nothing connects him to the phrase, and the phrase is centuries older than he. The Second Patriarch's 了了常知 and the 証道歌's 了了見 are the kin the Zen line joins, not the origin of the three characters, which are older than both. Finally, Finally, Understanding is a misreading, not a tradition.
Today. No Japanese dictionary enters 了了知; kotobank has 了了 only, the state of things being clear, and the bilingual dictionaries nothing [1][14]. The house's Complete Understanding is its own rendering, made for Takase Studios, and the only English of the phrase known. A rendering must keep the doubling as clarity, not as finishing, and knowing as a verb, not a noun; knowing clearly, clearly is the literal, and complete understanding a fair gloss.
A reading
The scroll is right and the page's story is wrong in the one way that matters: nobody coined these three characters in the eighteenth century. They are the Buddhist Chinese for knowing without residue, a Tang poet's words for knowing when he is being cursed, and the first half of a line that the founder of 円覚寺 used twice, once in 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. That verse is what a buyer should be told, in two sentences: knowing clearly, seeing clearly; the root of birth and death cut with one stroke, Kamakura, 1284. Whether Inzan ever brushed the three characters I could not find out; if he did, the page may say as brushed by, never as coined by. No change to the design or the reading; the title stands as a gloss, and the Finally, Finally alternative should go.
References
- 「了了」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版 日本国語大辞典 (初出 栄花物語, c. 1028–92) · 字通, at kotobank.
- Internet Archive, full-text index, "ryoryochi" (0 books).
- Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan, 1981; Zen Masters of Medieval Japan (snippets, the verse not rendered in either).
- 『大智度論』卷七, at CBETA. Taishō T25n1509, p. 112b20. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T1509&juan=7
- 法雲『翻譯名義集』, 寛永 printing. National Diet Library pid 2544443, scan 10. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2544443/1/10
- 寒山, in 『全唐詩』卷806, at zh.wikisource; also 李贄『三教妙述』, 1618 printing. National Diet Library classical pid 2580806, scan 8 (that leaf reads 駕 for 罵; read as 罵 with the 全唐詩). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2580806/1/8
- 『景徳伝灯録』卷三, at CBETA. Taishō T51n2076, p. 220a01–02. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2076&juan=3
- 永嘉玄覚『証道歌』, at CBETA. Taishō T48n2014, p. 396c23–24. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2014&juan=1
- 『虚堂和尚語録』卷九, at CBETA. Taishō T47n2000, p. 1052a05. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2000&juan=9
- 無学祖元『佛光国師語録』卷四, the 上堂, in 『国訳禅学大成』20, 1930. National Diet Library pid 1120192, scan 103. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1120192/1/103
- 無学祖元『佛光国師語録』卷四, the tonsure verse, in 『大日本仏教全書』95, 1922 typeset. National Diet Library pid 952799, scan 128. Date in 白石芳留 編『禅宗編年史』, 1937. National Diet Library pid 1230682, scan 173. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/952799/1/128
- 「インザン隱山惟琰」, 『禅宗辞典』, 1915. National Diet Library pid 936741, scan 159. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/936741/1/159
- National Diet Library, NDL Lab full-text search, 隠山惟琰 (22 notices, none with 了了知); Internet Archive full-text index and dealers' pages searched for Inzan Ien calligraphy, none with the three characters.
- JMdict (EDRDG), 「了了知」, at gokanji.db (no row).