Why balance matters more than totals: a candidate structural model of non-compensable wellbeing, duratva, and...

A persistent observation troubles both positive psychology and contemplative science: people suffer in the midst of success. The wealthy report emptiness; the deeply loved report captivity; the lucid report paralysis; the renunciate remains seized by the identity of renouncing. Existing wellbeing frameworks-utility theory, composite indices, PERMA-explain this poorly because they share a hidden structural assumption: compensability. If goods are compensable, a high total score should predict wellbeing regardless of balance. It does not.

Contemporary wellbeing frameworks are multidimensional but remain compensable: they allow surplus on one dimension to offset deficit on another. Buddhist contemplative science documents what practice produces, but neither field has identified the structural mechanism connecting practice to flourishing. This paper proposes that the missing structure is non-compensability, and that formalizing it yields both a theory of flourishing and a candidate structural account of liberation-in-life.

The Equilibrium Geometry of Flourishing locates a life in a four-dimensional state space with coordinates Dhana (sustaining sufficiency), Samsara (relational reciprocity), Vidya (critical consciousness), and Vairagya (autonomy-as-non-seizure). The equilibrium surface L represents balanced flourishing; duratva-the distance from this surface-is the primary scalar measure of avoidable suffering. Non-compensability is the structural axiom: as any coordinate approaches its lower threshold, duratva grows steeply toward its maximal finite value regardless of surplus on the others. A Burden Law, derived from this geometry, shows why acquisition without proportional Vairagya increases duratva rather than reducing it.

The model yields eight falsifiable hypotheses (H1-H8). H1: balance outpredicts totals in wellbeing surveys. H2: unmatched single-axis gains reduce long-run flourishing. H3: high Vidya with low Vairagya predicts a specific distress profile. H4: recovery rate after perturbation scales with Vairagya. H5: rebalancing outperforms single-axis intensification above threshold. H6: raters blind to the model sort cross-tradition symbols onto the four dimensions above chance. H7: Buddhist practitioners addressing at least three dimensions show steeper Liberation Coefficient growth. H8: PERMA profiles cluster dimensionally by practice type.

The geometry recovers the tradition's own paradigm-case verdicts (Janaka near the surface; the lottery winner far from it), identifies jivanmukti with stable equilibrium maintenance under acquisition, and provides a structural foundation for why all four canonical Buddhist paths are simultaneously required. The result is not a doctrinal prescription but a geometric consequence of non-compensability.