Then I'm guessing it was dropped by Shinran Shonin because I have not heard Rinban Bob or the new priest mention it. As for Tibetan Buddhism, they still adhere to it, but the Dalai Lama XIV thinks different because of the threat from China. China has taken his replacement and put their own replacement in. It's taken an ugly turn.
"In the mid-1990s, the Dalai Lama identified a 6-year-old boy as the Panchen Lama, a position second only to the Dalai Lama himself. But Chinese authorities took custody of the child, and his whereabouts remain unclear. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities identified another youth as the Panchen Lama, but he never won the trust of Tibetans.
In 2011, the Dalai Lama wrote: “Should the concerned public express a strong wish for the Dalai Lamas to continue, there is an obvious risk of vested political interests misusing the reincarnation system to fulfill their own political agenda.” He said then that he would reevaluate whether the custom should go on when he was in his 90s.
Why the statement now?
In fact, the Dalai Lama has claimed that as early as 1969 he made clear that the Tibetan people should decide whether reincarnations should continue. He has previously stated that he would not reincarnate in Tibet if it were not free, and he has mused that the Tibetan people should select their religious leaders democratically. To that effect, he has already divested the political power of his role to an elected official, based in India.
In September, the Dalai Lama stepped up his rhetoric on this point, raising the suggestion that he might be the last of his line. “If a weak Dalai Lama comes along, it will just disgrace the Dalai Lama,” he told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag."
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What do Chinese authorities say?
After the Dalai Lama’s statement in September, the Chinese government issued a firm rebuttal. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters, "The title of Dalai Lama is conferred by the central government."
China, which is officially atheist, will follow “set religious procedure and historic custom” to select a successor, she said.
Other officials have followed suit. "Only the central government can decide on keeping, or getting rid of, the Dalai Lama's lineage, and the 14th Dalai Lama does not have the final say," Zhu Weiqun, chairman of the ethnic and religious affairs committee of a high-ranking advisory body to China's parliament, told the state-run Global Times newspaper this week. “All [the Dalai Lama] can do is use his religious title to write about the continuation or not of the Dalai Lama to get eyeballs overseas.”
What happens next?
It’s unclear what will happen when the Dalai Lama dies, but the decision is a sensitive one that will put pressure on the Chinese government.
If the Chinese government does select a successor, its choice could be rejected by Tibetans, and that could exacerbate strained relations.
But the Dalai Lama has made nonviolence a key tenet of his teachings, and losing him – and any reincarnation – could also be risky.
Wu Chuke, a professor of social science at Beijing’s Ethnic Studies University, said that if the position is left empty, “many of the Tibetan Buddhists in China will feel like that the not being able to be reincarnated will be due to restrictions from the government and will further damage the relationship between them. This will put new pressure on the Chinese government in how they will deal with this problem.""
Why the Dalai Lama says reincarnation might not be for him
