Suffering as ontological asset: A Yogācāra account of human uniqueness in the age of AI

This paper argues that the Yogācāra concepts of vāsanā (薰習, impregnation) and āśraya-parāvṛtti (轉依, transformation of the basis) constitute the ontological ground of human uniqueness in the age of artificial intelligence. While existing Buddhist-AI scholarship has examined what AI lacks in terms of ethics, virtue, and karma, it has not addressed the ontological mechanism by which human beings are transformed through suffering. Drawing on the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, the Cheng Weishi Lun, and the Awakening of Faith (大乘起信論, Dasheng Qixin Lun), this paper demonstrates that the pañca-skandha (五蘊, five aggregates) structure, specifically saṅkhāra-dukkha (行苦, suffering-from-formations) mediated by manas-vijñāna (末那識), is the necessary condition for vāsanā and āśraya-parāvṛtti. AI, lacking the pañca-skandha entirely, cannot be vāsanā-impregnated or undergo āśraya-parāvṛtti. This asymmetry is not technical but ontological: the very capacity to suffer is the capacity to be transformed. That is what it means to be human in the age of AI.