Bhagat ji,
I read you express this view before in other messages and wanted to respond to it but couldn't. But I will do it now.
Confused ji,
We also pass on our genes. So the genes which make someone an excellent Brahmin are passed on to his offspring, increasing the likelyhood that he will be good at (and thus more likely to choose) the same profession. The qualities we posses like intelligence, love for learning, love for knowledge and truth, ability to maintain focus, etc actually have a biological basis. So the offspring is more likely to have the qualities a Brahmin has. They do often carry over from profession to profession. Strong leadership is good not only for Kshatriya, for example.
I am quite sure that you will not find a correspondence between this and any of the ancient religions, including Sikh. And it is not because there was no knowledge about genes then, but rather that the view you express is a materialistic one. Science which reduces mental phenomena as being byproduct of material phenomena will read into all its discoveries the materialistic view. The ancients however knew mental phenomena to be completely different from physical phenomena.
As I suggested in a message to Ambarsaria ji, genes being ultimately material phenomena, what is passed on from one generation to the next are only physical attributes. Mental phenomena on the other hand rise and fall away and condition the next one to arise on and on. All tendencies reside in the one instance of consciousness which passes on everything to the succeeding consciousness by way of several conditions, most notably contiguity condition.
Physically, I am almost a carbon copy of my father. But mentally, apart from being hot tempered and great attachment to taste, I see few similarities. Yes, there is this that when we think in terms of basic tendencies such as attachment to sense objects, anger, lust, pride, kindness, giving, morality and so on, we *all* have these to a lesser or greater degree. It is therefore easy to jump to conclusions when observing any two persons who happen to react more or less similarly to particular situations that their habits are the same, but this can be misleading. Indeed it is our habit to generalize and jump to conclusions, but this is because we do not in fact at the time, understand reality.
But of course there is also the fact that the Karma which conditions rebirth, just as this determines the kind of being one is born as, when a human being, also determines the kind of family one is born into. Just like now, we tend to associate with like-minded people; members of one family may have certain inclinations similar to each other. Also that particular karma marshals other karmas to bear fruit in what might then be seen as a 'pattern'. So if different members of a family receive more or less the same set of experiences, it is not surprising that the son for example, has developed over time, conditioned responses similarly to the father.
And imagine this. If the son becomes enlightened but the father doesn't, the habits of the son must clearly have changed completely. Would this mean that his genes must also have changed? No, because genes don't change…..
But really, gene is a concept and is never the object of wisdom, which is why it would never be the concern of the wise of old. More importantly though, they knew that particular material realities (from which the concept 'gene' is derived) may act as “base” or place of birth for the arising of mental realities, for example, the eye-base is birthplace for seeing consciousness and ear-base for hearing, and they know that some of them are “caused by” mentality, such as speech and bodily intimation. *But materiality can never be the “cause” for mentality*. To think that it does must be due to the influence of a materialistic view which is one kind of wrong view. Indeed this view understands neither mental nor physical phenomena since to understand one requires understanding the other as well. So really, science is completely ignorant when it comes to reality / Truth.
Why would someone interested in religion be moved by the findings of science in such matters? Religion encourages the increase in good and reduction of evil and these clearly points to a mechanism within the mental phenomena not related to any material phenomena. Wisdom is developed by repeated arising. Good vs. evil, one increase in frequency over the other is by virtue of whether there is more wisdom or there is more ignorance.
When a religion encourages us to do good and avoid evil, what does this imply? Is it not that one must see the value of good and the harm of evil and that in this very seeing is the right course of action taken? Wherefore the necessity to refer to materiality and gene or even brain? If materiality was the cause for mentality then science could very well come out one day with an enlightenment pill. But enlightened people of the past *did not* have any pill nor it mattered which caste he or she was born into. This is because the development of wisdom follows a path which requires recognition of the obstructions such as ignorance, craving, wrong understanding and so on. Can a pill eradicate any of these tendencies, ones that have been accumulated from aeons in the past?
Besides if we are to except Karma and the fact of rebirth, what of the fact that in the last life we were a {censored}roach and now a human being and these two have very different genes?
Very misleading I'd say this idea that genes influence our inclinations and habits. Besides this actually leans toward a deterministic view which science itself at other times object to. :-/
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