For many years, the Tibetan leader has been saying that he does not expect the Chinese government will change overnight and reverse its policies of a half-century (though he is more than ready whenever it does do so); but he was and is confident that more and more Chinese individuals, one by one, and slowly, will realise that they have more in common with Tibetans than differences, and that they can now have access to Tibetan wisdom as people in London and Sydney and Paris do. Officially denied any religious life for almost 60 years, they can in time discover that there is, in fact, a great and deep religious tradition alive within their own borders. The last time I flew to Lhasa, in 2002, a surprisingly large number of Chinese I saw were, just as westerners do, making offerings at the central Jokhang Temple, seeking out Tibetan lamas, even picking up Tibetan Buddhist texts.

When I travelled with the Dalai Lama last year, we stepped one autumn day into an elegant conference room, high up in a Yokohama hotel, and as soon as the Dalai Lama came in, the 60 or so assembled there began to sob and to perform full prostrations on the floor. They sat, raptly, on the ground, disdaining the chairs laid out for them, as he offered advice about Buddhist study and, when he was finished, clustered around him, desperate for a touch, a blessing. Every one of the devotees was a Han Chinese, from the People’s Republic.

Miracles are not part of the Buddhist way of thinking, and if there is one thing this Dalai Lama stresses, it’s his humanity, and all that joins him with the rest of us (he likes nothing less than being taken as something special). China and Tibet will long be neighbours, he points out, and in any neighbourhood throwing a stone through your neighbour’s window, even in retaliation, will not only poison relations between you for a long time, but unsettle the entire community. And, as he has been saying since long before this year’s demonstrations in Tibet, what is important is not what happens this summer, when the world is looking at China (and China to some extent needs and seeks the approval of the world), but what happens after the Games are over, when the world’s eye turns towards Iraq, or the global economy, or the presidential election in the US. A monk always thinks in terms of generations, where a traditional politician is more inclined to think in terms of moments – or until the next election. But when a monk joins the world of politics and, in fact (as in the Dalai Lama’s case) becomes the most seasoned political leader on the planet having been ruler of his people for 68 years, he is opening a window from which everyone can benefit.

Let the Games begin, the Dalai Lama has been saying even as so many others still clamour for some visible signs of dissatisfaction; but let us remember, after they end, that they are just Games, and that the need for communication and a larger sense of identity that they embody are the main things we should keep stressing. China this month is showing off its undeniably impressive material accomplishments to the world; but in time, like Europe and America and Japan, it will see that bread alone is not sufficient. At that point Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism may be the one resource that China needs most desperately.