What would you pay to be happy?

The source of our happiness is closer than ever to being located, measured and commodified. Alex Renton meets the 'psychoeconomists' and asks, have they created a monster?

The happiest man in the world is a 67-year-old Buddhist monk called Matthieu Ricard. He starts his day sitting in a meadow in front of his hermitage in Nepal. He watches hundreds of miles of Himalayan peaks glowing in front of him in the rising sun. The scene "blends naturally and seamlessly with the peace he has within".

Over the past 40 years Ricard has put in more than 10,000 hours of meditation: he is the supreme practitioner of what we now call "mindfulness". When not gazing at Himalayan peaks, Ricard is likely to be found in the boardrooms and at the dining tables of the rich and famous. Ever since his "happiest man" diagnosis in 2008 - made after days of brain scans at the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin - he has been an object of fascination for the powerful.