In 1941, the Korean Zen master Geumta (金陀, 1895–1969) composed "The Essence and Measure of the Universe" after seven years of seated meditation, encoding his cosmological observations as a numerical system built from four numbers assigned to the Four Great Elements: Earth = 1, Water = 3, Fire = 5, Wind = 7. This paper constructs a number-theoretic bridge from the source text's numerical system to modern p-adic mathematics via the adele A₇ = ℚ₇ × ℝ. The Four-Element matrix M = [3, 7, 1, 5] is shown to act as a spectral filter on the Bruhat-Tits tree T₇: its eigenvalues λ₁ = 4+2√2 and λ₂ = 4−2√2 determine which states localize at the boundary (crossing into the manifest Vajra-Realm) and which remain in the tree's interior (staying in the hidden generative Womb-Realm). M is proven to be the unique operator naturally determined by the Four Elements and the local structure of T₇. Principal results: (1) The spectral classification on T₇ realizes the Buddhist cosmological transition from the Womb-Realm (True Emptiness, 眞空) to the Vajra-Realm (Wondrous Existence, 妙有) as boundary localization. The manifest-exclusive ratio equals 2 (√2−1) ≈ 82. 84%, identical to the silver-ratio partition of the Ammann-Beenker quasicrystal tiling's integrated density of states. (2) The source text's dynamical laws — attraction = 3¹⁰ and repulsion = 5⁶ — emerge automatically from Fermat's little theorem in F₇*, with exponents given by the row sums of M. (3) The embedding ℚ (√2) ↪ ℚ₇ exists because √2 ≡ 3 (mod 7) ; among the primes appearing as element values 3, 5, 7, only p = 7 admits this embedding, providing a direct number-theoretic link between the Ammann-Beenker quasicrystal and the Bruhat-Tits tree T₇. The paper presents 61 theorems organized across 15 phases and 9 sections. This work is a number-theoretic analysis, not a physical theory: it makes no empirical predictions and claims no correspondence with modern astronomical measurements. Source text: Geumta Daehwasang, "Shinsetsu Uchu no Honshitsu to Keiryo" (New Theory: The Essence and Measure of the Universe), 1941 (Japanese original) ; Korean translation by Cheongwha Seonsa, 1974; incorporated into Geumgangsimron (金剛心論), 1979.
Min Seog Choi (Tue,) studied this question.