Integrative Discernment: Functionally Translating Vedānta's Buddhi beyond the Body–Mind–Spirit Paradigm

Body–mind–spirit paradigms promise wholeness yet systematically fail through spiritual bypassing, integrative confusion, and deficits of discernment. This article diagnoses these failures as symptoms of a missing structural dimension—the capacity of Integrative Discernment, which discerns, attunes, and responds across rather than among experiential registers. Western philosophy, despite its analytical sophistication, has reached what may be called an "Enlightenment ceiling," privileging rational control while leaving non-rational attunement undertheorized. Classical Vedānta's buddhi explicitly articulates this integrative function but remains non-exportable due to its soteriological, anthropocentric, and substance-metaphysical commitments. Methodologically, the study formalizes functional translation—a comparative and process-based procedure that rearticulates inherited concepts through their operative logic rather than their metaphysical presuppositions. Through this approach, buddhi is reconstructed as Integrative Discernment, a meta-dimensional capacity expressed through Discriminative Awareness, Attuning Intelligence, and Contextual Responsiveness. The resulting framework bridges classical insight and contemporary inquiry, reframing integration as dynamic attunement rather than metaphysical fusion, and positioning discernment as the living rhythm of coherence across philosophy and practice.