wil said:
I had understood, somewhere along the way, that it wasn't that Buddhists believed or didn't believe in G-d, that they just thought with all the rest of the involved in experienceing and learning about what exists here and now, that the discussion of what and if and how relating to G-d was superfluous in this plane of existence...
Namaste wil,
well, it sort of depends on the being to whom the Buddha was addressing.
Buddhist teachings are given using Upaya, or skillful means. what this means is that the teachings that are given are based on the spiritual capacity of the being to whom the Buddha was speaking.
as such, we find that this subject is treated in two different manners within the Buddha Dharma.
for a great many beings, especially those with a strong theistic bent, Buddha Shakyamuni didn't really respond to those sorts of queries. This is part of the Four Unthinkables in the Hinyana/Theraveda tradition. by the same token, for those beings that had a different view, a different teaching was given which explains that there is no root sequence to phenomena.
What we see clearly in the texts is the Buddha not accepting the
idea of an absolute that is responsible for the world. In the Digha Nikaya
(the Long Discourses) 24 the Buddha states:
"There are some ascetics and brahmins who declare as their doctrine
that all things began with the creation by a god, or Brahma."
And this god is characterized so:
"That Worshipful Brahma, the Great God, the Omnipotent, the
Omniscient, the Organizer, the Protection, the Creator, the Most
Perfect Ruler, the Designer and Orderer, the Father of All That Have Been and
Shall Be, He by Whom we were created, He is permanent, Constant,
Eternal, Unchanging, and He will remain so for ever and ever."
which is a nice characterization of the brahmanical notion of the
creatorgod one finds in the early brahmanical literature, particularly the
Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, and it seems to fit for most every other
creator god notion that has come down the pike:
"There is none other God but Thee, the Almighty, the Most Exalted,
the All-Powerful, the All-Wise".
The notion of creator is rejected in terms of the Buddha in satirically retelling the creation story of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad. This not "a discreet silence about the First Cause," it is not indifference.
Though the Buddha's particular rejection is not a philosophical argument
against a creator god, it is rather a religious statement that is consistent
with the underlying ontology of becoming that characterizes what the Buddha
taught. What is clear, in the broader context, is that this rejection is not tied to a particular god-notion, but addresses the notion of a "single supernatural Being" from which "all things began," given that such a notion is invariably grounded in a radically different ontological basis than what the Buddha presents.
metta,
~v
The most I can say about it is that the Dalai Lama, or any Lama for that matter, from my understanding, is selected as a child by other prominent Lamas and priests. Basically, they hunt for him, and when they think they've found the child who is the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, they ask him certain questions that only the previous incarnation would know. 
