I know this is a few days late, but I couldn’t help but notice that no one mentioned how your “Zenlike but not Zen” philosophy is basically just a weak version of Stoicism (weak in that you seem to desire some passion, whereas a stoic would advocate distancing yourself from all highs and lows). There is no need to create techniques to do this from scratch, the path has already been laid out. I would encourage anyone interested in the topic to research Stoic teachings, particularly Epictetus, if you haven’t done so already.
[I recommend Epictetus because there is an unfortunate tendency in ancient Stoic philosophers toward more mystical, almost religious, thinking. Epictetus refrains from that, for the most part, and concentrates on practical aspects.]
I’m not sure I understand at what point the torture would no longer be justified. It’s easy to say that it is preferable to a googolplex of people with dust specks is worse than one person being tortured, but there has to be some number at which this is no longer the case. At some point even your preferences should flip, but you never suggest a point where it would be acceptable. Would it be somewhere around 1.5-1.6 billion, assuming the dust specks were worth 1 second of pain? Is it acceptable if it is just 2 people affected? How many dust specks go into 1 year of torture? I think people would be more comfortable with your conclusion if you had some way to quantify it; right now all we have is your assertion that the math is in the dust speck’s favor.