Kinch's Gate

Pavel Tretyak's Personal Buddhist Journal

Kinch’s Gate is my Buddhist journal and an open record of my thoughts, questions, reflections, and failures as I continue down a spiritual path that I’ve only recently begun to take seriously. While I’ve identified loosely as Buddhist for over a decade, it wasn’t until 2025, at age 35, that I began to actively study, sit, and reshape my relationship with suffering, attachment, and truth. This section of my website is not academic, nor is it authoritative; it is personal, evolving, and best read as reflection. If it is useful to others, I’m grateful, but it is primarily here to help me see myself more clearly.

The name Kinch’s Gate comes from Stephen Dedalus (nicknamed “Kinch” in Ulysses), whose life is defined by thresholds: history, faith, art, family, and identity. I’ve always resonated with his position at the edge of things as he is pulled by the weight of the past while searching for a path forward. Buddhism also speaks of gates: the Lalitavistara, for instance, outlines 108 gates to the Dharma, each representing a mindset, action, or realization. In a similar light, consider each one of these pages (each essay, meditation technique, or academic note) as an expression of a gate I have encountered or walked through. Buddhism teaches impermanence, and that impermanence lies closely to our identities, our selves, and the ideas we hold. These pages are documenting the multitudinous deaths I encounter as I die and am again reborn, reframing each death with increasing reflection, and hopefully bringing more kindness into this world.

Written July 15, 2025

Last Edited July 15, 2025

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