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了了知 ryōryōchi Complete Understanding

了了知 (ryōryōchi), knowing clearly, clearly, is followed from a sutra of 179 through a Tang poem to a Zen verse of 1284.

Japanese Scroll of Complete Understanding (ryōryōchi) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Complete Understanding了了知ryōryōchi

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

了了知, ryōryōchi, knowing clearly, clearly, is plain Buddhist Chinese: it is in a Perfection of Wisdom sutra translated in 179, in the great commentary of the early fifth century, and in a Tang poem of Hanshan 寒山's own voice, which three English translators have rendered. In the Zen records it opens a six-character line, 了了知了了見, which Mugaku Sogen 無学祖元 used twice in Kamakura — 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 attribution of the phrase to the Zen master Inzan Ien 隠山惟琰 (1754–1818) as its coiner has no witness: the characters are sixteen centuries older than he, and the full-text index of his printed record finds 了了 there once, in another line, and 了了知 not at all.

Overview

The sense. One sense, clearly, in three registers. In the sutras, the knowing of those who see the Buddha, and the Buddha's own knowing, complete and present; in Hanshan, a man's plain knowing that he is being cursed; in Zen, the knowing by which Huike 慧可 shows that his stilled mind is not annihilation, and the line Sogen opened with the three characters, which its one annotator glosses in the words of the 首楞厳経. The three characters carry all three.

The words. Three characters. 了了 is a doubled adverb, clearly, distinctly, in the Buddhist canon from the translations of the second century [1], in the secular Chinese the dictionaries cite from the third, 陸機 and the 博物志 [2], and in Japanese, by the 日国's earliest example, in the 栄花物語, whose chapter 玉の台 describes the paradise painted on a hall's doors, where the reborn see the Buddha and hear the Law, clearly and distinctly [2][3]; 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 1664 print of Sogen's record and the 1922 collected edition do, 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 clearly, 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 them in the canon [4]; and 了了知了了見, knowing clearly, seeing clearly, the six-character line the founder of 円覚寺 used twice, whose first half the three characters are.

The text in English. The three characters have no English rendering of their own in anything found: the Internet Archive's full-text index has no book with the romaji, and JMdict has no entry for the phrase or for 了了 [5]. Hanshan's poem, which carries them, is in English three times, each reading the clause 分明了了知 its own way: R. H. Blyth, I know quite well what they think of me, 1964 [6]; Red Pine, this is something I know well, 1983, in the revised edition of 2000 [7]; and Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt, Of course, I knew what he was saying, 2018 [8]. Sogen's tonsure verse is not rendered in the English histories that tell of the tonsure and were read [9].

The historical record

179 to 1143. The sutras, the great commentary, and a dictionary's longer form. In the Perfection of Wisdom sutra that Lokakṣema 支婁迦讖 translated in 179, those born into another Buddha's land see the Buddha face to face preaching the Law, hear the Perfection of Wisdom again, and all know it clearly, 便面見佛說法，復聞波羅蜜，皆悉了了知之 [10]. In the great commentary on the Perfection of Wisdom, translated between 402 and 405, the Buddha-eye is knowing every dharma clearly, as present before one, 佛眼名一切法現前了了知 [11]. The Song dictionary of Buddhist terms of 1143, explaining the name Buddha from the same commentary, writes the longer 菩提樹下，了了覺知，故名佛陀, beneath the bodhi tree he knew with clear awakening, and so he is called the Buddha [12].

Tang. Hanshan, a poem, read at the 全唐詩 and in a print of 1618. The hermit poet of 天台 looks back over twenty years of walking slowly back to 国清寺, where everyone calls him a fool (Red Pine reads 憶得二十年 as one such walk, twenty years ago [7]): 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 [13]. 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" [14]. 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 [15]. 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 [16].

1279 to 1286, Mugaku Sogen. The Chinese master whom Tokimune brought to Kamakura in 1279 joined the two halves and used the six characters twice; the Taishō canon, its Japanese volumes included, has them nowhere else [17]. 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。五陵公子蹈青行。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 [17]. 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, and fifty-four of his kin and close retainers took it 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 [18][19]. Tokimune died that day, at the hour of the Rooster, in his thirty-fourth year as the chronicle counts it, 年三四; he was born in 1251 [19][20]. The founder of 円覚寺 gave the verse to the man who had built it for him, and the three characters open it. A 1930 annotated translation glosses the line in one sentence, 知は是れ妄覺、見を見する時, which I read as knowing is deluded awareness, and seeing is the moment one sees the seeing [21]. The second clause takes its words from the 首楞厳経: 見見之時，見非是見, when seeing sees seeing, the seeing is not seeing [22]. Read so, the annotator takes 了了知 as a knowing that has seen through its own knowing, not as a knowing that was never deluded.

1754–1818, Inzan Ien 隠山惟琰. An attribution that circulates in English says the phrase was coined by Zen Master Inzan Ien; the only source found for it is a product page of this site, which carried the sentence until September 2026, and a search engine's summary built from copies of that page. Inzan was a Rinzai master born in 越前, trained under 月船, who received Hakuin 白隠's Zen from Gasan 峨山, lived at 梅泉寺 in 美濃, and was abbot of 妙心寺 in 1808 [23][24]; he died on the twenty-ninth day of the eleventh month of 文化 14, which fell in 1818 [25], and the Inzan branch of Rinzai is named for him [26]. His brushwork is not abundant, and what survives shows a fondness for the circle, one of them inscribed with the first line of another poem of Hanshan's, My heart is like the autumn moon [24]. Nothing opened connects him to 了了知. His own record, 『隠山録』 as printed in 1942, is served only in Japan and was searched, not read: the National Diet Library's full-text index finds 了了 in it once, in 了了了時無可了, a line of 同安's 十玄談 that the 伝灯録 prints [27], finds 上堂 and 分明 in nine and in more than ten places, and finds no 了了知 or 了々知; and the NDL Lab's index of its public-domain books holds twenty-two notices of his life, none with the three characters [28]. If he brushed them, he brushed three characters sixteen centuries old; he did not coin them.

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. The Song dictionary is not a witness for the three characters; it writes 了了覺知.

Today. The dictionaries at kotobank enter 了了 only, the state of things being clear, and JMdict has neither [2][5]. In the English found, the three characters stand only inside Hanshan's poem, where the translators read the clause as knowing well or for certain [6][7][8]; the kin 了了常知 is in Norman Waddell's 2024 English of Yamada Mumon's 1962 lectures on Hakuin's Song of Zazen, as constant awareness, perfect clarity [29].

A reading

Nobody coined these three characters. They are the Buddhist Chinese for knowing clearly, which I take as knowing with nothing left over, in the mouth of a second-century translator describing the blessed in another Buddha's land, of a Tang poet who knows when he is being cursed, and of a Chinese master in Kamakura who put them at the head of a dying regent's verse. That verse is the reason the line is remembered: knowing clearly, seeing clearly; the root of birth and death cut through with one stroke, Kamakura, 1284. The dictionaries read the doubled 了 as clear [2]; the three English translators of Hanshan render the clause as knowing well or knowing for certain, and none of them, nor any witness read here, takes 了 as finished. Knowing clearly, clearly is the literal, and complete understanding is a fair gloss of it. Whether Inzan ever brushed the characters I could not find out; the index of his printed record does not find them, and the book itself is unread.

Sources not seen

Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan, Harvard University Press, 1981, at its account of the tonsure. A lending copy at the Internet Archive (identifier fivemountainsrin0000coll), read in excerpts only; the page would say whether Collcutt renders Sogen's verse.

『隠山録』, Inzan's record, edited by 辻東山, 金宝山瑞竜寺, Gifu, 1942. National Diet Library pid 1138704, served only to registered readers in Japan; its full-text index was run, its pages were not read. It would say whether Inzan used the phrase in a passage the index misreads.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. CBETA, the canon ordered by date, for 了了: the oldest works are Later Han translations, as CBETA attributes them to 支婁迦讖 and 安世高 (佛說阿闍世王經 T0626, p. 402c25; 道地經 T0607, p. 232c23; 普法義經 T0098, p. 924c14; 道行般若經 T0224). https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search?q=了了&rows=20&order=time_from
  2. 「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) · 普及版 字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/了了-659632
  3. 『栄花物語』 玉の台, in 与謝野寛 ほか 編『日本古典全集』 栄花物語 中, 日本古典全集刊行会, 1926 (the edition prints 瞭瞭分明). National Diet Library pid 1019589, scan 84. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1019589/1/84
  4. CBETA, occurrences of each string across the canon, longer forms included (了了知 counts 了了知見 and 了了知之): 了了分明 761 · 了了見 568 · 了了常知 214 · 了了知 212. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search?q=了了分明&rows=20&order=time_from
  5. Internet Archive, full-text index, "ryoryochi", "ryoryo chi" and "ryouryouchi" (0 books each). https://archive.org · JMdict (EDRDG), 了了知 and 了了, at jisho.org (no entry). https://jisho.org/search/了了知
  6. R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, volume 2, History of Zen, Hokuseido Press, 1964, p. 169.
  7. Red Pine, translator, The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Copper Canyon Press, 1983; revised and expanded edition, 2000, poem 271.
  8. Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt, translators, The Complete Cold Mountain: Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan, Shambhala, 2018, poem 278.
  9. Helmut Brinker and Hiroshi Kanazawa, Zen: Masters of Meditation in Images and Writings, Artibus Asiae, 1996, the introductory essay; Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, volume 2, Japan, 1990, World Wisdom edition, 2005, p. 35; Collcutt 1981 (see Sources not seen).
  10. 『道行般若經』, 支婁迦讖 譯, 卷4, at CBETA. Taishō T08n0224, p. 446c05. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search/kwic?q=了了知&work=T0224&juan=4
  11. 『大智度論』卷七, at CBETA. Taishō T25n1509, p. 112b20. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T1509&juan=7
  12. 法雲『翻譯名義集』卷一, at CBETA. Taishō T54n2131, p. 1057a28. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search/kwic?q=菩提樹下了了&work=T2131&juan=1 · the 寛永 printing, National Diet Library pid 2544443, scan 10. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2544443/1/10
  13. 寒山, in 『全唐詩』卷806, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/全唐詩/卷806 · 李贄『三教妙述』, 1618 printing, National Diet Library classical pid 2580806, scan 8 (the leaf writes 怎 for 爭 and lacks two lines the 全唐詩 prints). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2580806/1/8
  14. 『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
  15. 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
  16. 『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
  17. 無学祖元『佛光国師語録』卷四, the 上堂, in 『大日本仏教全書』95, 1922. National Diet Library pid 952799, scan 122. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/952799/1/122 · 『佛光録』13巻, volume 1, 田原仁左衛門道住, 寛文4 (1664). National Diet Library pid 2559746, scan 85. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2559746/1/85 · Taishō T80n2549, p. 168c29–169a01, at SAT, whose search for 了了知了了見 across the Taishō returns this line and the tonsure verse only. https://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/T2549_.80.0168c29:0169a01.cit
  18. 無学祖元『佛光国師語録』卷四, 小佛事, the tonsure verse, in 『大日本仏教全書』95, 1922. National Diet Library pid 952799, scan 128. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/952799/1/128 · 『佛光録』13巻, volume 2, 寛文4 (1664). National Diet Library pid 2559747, scan 159. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2559747/1/159 · Taishō T80n2549, p. 174c15–18, at SAT. https://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/T2549_.80.0174c15:0174c18.cit
  19. 白石芳留 編『禅宗編年史』, 1937, 弘安7年4月4日. National Diet Library pid 1230682, scan 173. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1230682/1/173
  20. 「北条時宗」, デジタル版 日本人名大辞典+Plus, at kotobank (建長3年5月15日生まれ … 弘安7年4月4日死去。34歳). https://kotobank.jp/word/北条時宗-132163
  21. 『国訳禅学大成』20, 1930, the note to the 上堂. National Diet Library pid 1120192, scan 103. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1120192/1/103
  22. 『大佛頂首楞嚴經』卷二, at CBETA. Taishō T19n0945, p. 113a17. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search/kwic?q=見見之時&work=T0945&juan=2
  23. 「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
  24. Audrey Yoshiko Seo with Stephen Addiss, The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin, Shambhala, 2010, pp. 248–49, and plate 7.7.
  25. 「隠山惟琰」, デジタル版 日本人名大辞典+Plus, at kotobank (1754－1818; 文化14年11月29日死去。64歳). https://kotobank.jp/word/隠山惟琰-1123062
  26. 『坐禅十年』, 1942, p. 206, 隱山派の法窟. National Diet Library pid 1040722, scan 111. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1040722/1/111
  27. 『景徳伝灯録』卷二十九, 同安察禪師十玄談, 一色, at CBETA. Taishō T51n2076, p. 455c16. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search/kwic?q=了了了時&work=T2076&juan=29
  28. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text index within 『隠山録』 (1942, pid 1138704): 了了 once, at scan 84 (了了了時無可了); 上堂 in nine places, the first at scan 11; 分明 in more than ten, the first at scan 16; 了了知 and 了々知 none (excerpts only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1138704 · NDL Lab full-text index, 隠山惟琰 (22 items, none with 了了知). https://lab.ndl.go.jp
  29. Yamada Mumon, Hakuin's Song of Zazen, translated by Norman Waddell, Shambhala, 2024 (from 『坐禅和讃講話』, 1962), section 68, Open Your Eyes.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations, of an earlier version — every item tested at its address; some resolve; one resolves with a caveat on its narrative gloss; one misattributed — a text credited to the wrong author, self-contradicted by the account's own methodology note; the rest not openable

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 了了知 (ryōryōchi)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/ryoryochi.