A few weeks ago, on his visit to Britain, the Dalai Lama attended a function at which there happened to be representatives of a number of different faiths – Christian, Muslim, Hindu and, of course, Buddhist. Moving among the gathering, the Tibetan Buddhist leader greeted each representative in his usual fashion, hands clasped together, bowing in a gesture of humility, then touching his forehead against theirs. Among the group was a Sikh wearing a splendid white turban and with a magnificent flowing white beard. After touching heads, the Dalai Lama reached for the beard with both hands, stroking it admiringly while laughingly addressing the assembled group: ‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’

When the Dalai Lama laughs it is like a bell ringing. People have no choice but to laugh themselves. And nobody laughed more than the Sikh. The Dalai Lama was happy. The Sikh was happy. Everybody was happy. It was a happy moment.

Later that same day the Dalai Lama was to be found at an event called Creating A Happier World, promoted by the organisation Action For Happiness, of which the Dalai Lama has recently become patron. The event was to launch a new course in happiness called Exploring What Matters.

The co-founders of Action For Happiness are well-known in the field of what might be called well-being: Geoff Mulgan is an author and social theorist who, among other things, has trained as a Buddhist monk, been a van driver for the musical collective Red Wedge and acted as a policy adviser to Tony Blair. Richard Layard is an economist, an expert on mental health and the author of Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, which argues that we should make happiness, not growth, the object of our economic policies. Anthony Seldon has been a pioneer in the idea of incorporating well-being and happiness lessons in school curricula.

As well as the Dalai Lama, among those talking at the launch event was Matthieu Ricard, the French Tibetan Buddhist monk who, as a result of MRI scans of brain activity that basically was off the chart, has been described as ‘the happiest man in the world’ (an accolade that Ricard wears lightly, arguing that since so few people have had the required MRI scans, who could possibly tell?).

If these people can’t crack the happiness question, nobody can.

Of course, the pursuit of happiness is hardly a novel enterprise. It has been around since the birth of man. And, as Mark Williamson, the director of Action For Happiness, points out, happiness in this context is not to be confused with pleasure, or even those moments of incandescent joy that arrive in our lives unbidden and slip frustratingly through our fingers like sand. ‘For me it’s a more Aristotelian sense of a “life well lived” happy rather than a “joyous moment” happy. Of course, life is a roller coaster with both joy and pain, but a happy life is one where you’re able to deal with the challenges and setbacks and still cope and thrive.’

Williamson is very much a ‘life well lived’ sort of guy. He arrived at the organisation’s office in east London on his bicycle, apologised profusely for being five minutes late, and made me a cup of tea. A smiley man, he bubbles with infectious enthusiasm. If there had been someone available with a beard to stroke, you suspect that only natural English reticence would have prevented him from doing so.

‘What contributes to happiness is massively different for people,’ he goes on, ‘but there are some themes that come up again and again. A feeling of inner mental peace is the most important thing – this sense of whether we’re hard on ourselves is a huge driver of happiness. And externally, our relationships are far more important than our income, where we live – even to some extent the society we live in. Our connections to other people matter so much more than the material things. So inner peace, the joy we can get out of helping others, a broader sense of life’s meaning – all of those things are really strong in the course.’

Based on a mixture of philosophy, cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness training and scientific research, Exploring What Matters runs over eight weeks and is broken down into a series of capsule studies: What Really Matters in Life?, What Actually Makes Us Happy?, Can We Find Peace Of Mind?, How Should We Treat Others?, and so on.

The emphasis is very much on group discussion, with participants asked to reflect on what makes them happy and unhappy, and to share experiences and strategies for coping with difficulties, stress or loss. One exercise, Future Self, invites people to imagine themselves on their deathbed, looking back over their life and giving advice to their ‘past self’ about the things they’re most proud of, and the things they regret. Another encourages participants to ‘focus on the good things’ that have happened over the previous week. ‘We’re very good at noticing what we did wrong and what we’re worried about, but we don’t have as good habits – and acculturating habits in schools, in particular – in training us to notice the good things and what’s gone well, not in some wishful-thinking way, but in a conscious, positive way,’ says Williamson.

The course follows a model similar to Alcoholics Anonymous or the Alpha course in Christianity – ‘self-organising groups of like-minded people working to a clear structure’, as Williamson puts it. There are no accredited ‘teachers’ as such, rather volunteers run the course using material provided by Action For Happiness. Participants are asked to make a recommended donation of £90, to cover the costs of hiring a hall, refreshments, the coursebook and so on. ‘But if someone donates only 50p, they’re still welcome,’ Williamson says. ‘On some courses we lose money, on some we might more than cover our costs. It is entirely done as a non-profit, charitable initiative.’

Action For Happiness operates under the aegis of the Young Foundation, which was founded to continue the work of the late sociologist and activist Michael Young, who co-founded the Open University and the Consumers’ Association, Which?. It was originally known as the Movement To Happiness, changing its name to Action For Happiness in 2011 when Williamson took over as its director. At that time it numbered only a few hundred members; it now has 60,000.

Williamson, who is 42, studied electronics at university and went on to work as a management consultant in the corporate world.

‘I was brought up to be very left-brain logical, but not able to be in tune with my own emotions and state of mind, which led to big problems,’ he says. ‘Basically, I was “successful” but incredibly stressed.’ Afflicted with acute back pain, he was told by doctors that he was suffering from a hereditary spine disorder. After doing his own research into the link between mind and body, he began to do simple meditation exercises to help relieve stress. ‘I thought I’d be crippled for life. Within a few weeks I was able to start running again. It transformed my life.’

Leaving the corporate world, he worked in the field of environmentalism and sustainability. ‘I came to the realisation that for as long as we still think “success” for our society is perpetual growth, not only are we never going to solve our environmental problems, we’re never going to solve our well-being problems either. That was a big wake-up for me.’

We live in a culture that constantly sends the message that happiness and self-fulfilment lies in material goods and social status. We all know it’s not true, but still persist in believing it. The rise over the past 20 years of the ‘self-help’ industry (‘rather narcissistic and inward-looking. It’s me, me, me…’ Williamson says) – the commodification of the pursuit of happiness – only tends to confirm the apparent paradox that the more we strive for personal happiness the less likely we are to find it.

Rather, Williamson says, the Action For Happiness course ‘is really about secular ethics. In a society that’s so materially obsessed, and where religion isn’t necessarily dominant any more as a way of helping you decide how to live well, how do you help people make wise life choices for themselves and others and live in a good way?

‘People often arrive coming from the position of “something’s missing in my life…” But what they often come out with is the thought that, “This has made me want to help others more,” and that being part of something greater than themselves turns out to be quite a good way of pursuing happiness. If you’re just striving on your own, reading the odd self-help book in the closet, it’s not going to achieve very much.’

Research conducted by Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, into ‘the architecture of sustainable happiness’ has suggested that genes influence 50 per cent of the variation in our personal happiness; circumstances and environment affect about 10 per cent, while the remaining 40 per cent is accounted for by intentional activities – what we consciously choose to do and think. As Seneca observed 2,000 years ago, a man is as miserable as he thinks he is. Lyubomirsky’s measurements (her research was conducted by comparing twins) are a useful indicator for the average person living in Western society, Williamson believes; less so for those living in circumstances of extreme poverty and danger.

Research suggests that income constitutes a relatively small measure of happiness – a fact that the misery of so many lottery winners appears to confirm, to the consolation of the rest of us. We are all familiar with the trope of the ‘happy poor’ – people living on subsistence levels in developing countries who seem content with so little. And there may be something to it. ‘The reason why some people in poor countries are able to live happy lives is because they have so many other things that matter more: strong family and personal relationships, a sense of purpose, connection to a community, often faith,’ Williamson says. ‘But on the whole, if you live in a poor country you’re much less likely to be happy and have high well-being than if you live in a rich country.’

A World Happiness study, published by the UN-affiliated Sustainable Development Solutions Network, suggests that three of the bottom four nations in ‘national happiness’ are in sub-Saharan Africa (Syria is the other). The top four, unsurprisingly, are in Europe.

Inspired by the example of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, which gauges prosperity by measuring ‘gross national happiness’ rather than GDP, since 2012 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has run its own Measuring National Well-being programme, asking people about life satisfaction, happiness and anxiety. It has shown a gradual increase in reported happiness each year (a rise of 0.08 points since 2014).

‘We wouldn’t like to take any credit for this,’ Williamson jokes. According to the ONS survey, the ‘happiest’ place in Britain is the area of Fermanagh and Omagh in Northern Ireland; the ‘unhappiest’, Bolsover in Derbyshire – a fact surely unconnected to the fact that its local MP is the famously disputative Dennis Skinner.

Williamson says that in its pilot phase the course has attracted people across the social and emotional scale. ‘There are definitely a lot of people who would describe themselves as being at the happy end of the spectrum and want to help others, and they are fabulous; they are the movement-building people who are volunteering to lead events. But then there’s also a pretty strong contingent of people who are maybe in a dark place right now and wanting to find a way out of that.’

Participants are asked to complete a well-being questionnaire at the beginning and end of the course, similar to the ONS well-being survey. ‘The research we’ve done shows something like a 15 per cent increase in life-satisfaction scores, which is enormous,’ says Williamson. ‘We also measure self-reported compassion: how do you feel when you see someone in need? Do you trust others? And those things go up as well. It does seem as if people leave the course feeling more trusting and more caring.’

To the outsider, much of what Action For Happiness is advocating seems to come from the department of the blindingly obvious: happiness is not an individual pursuit but a social one; family and friends make you happy; it’s good to help people; nothing is more conducive to happiness than to give with no thought of reward; count your blessings. But while we know these things, we tend to forget them. Or rather we forget to incorporate the ideas and practices into our lives.

Adrian Bethune is a primary-school teacher from south London who, disillusioned with ‘teaching children simply to pass tests’, took part in one of the pilot courses of Action For Happiness. He was motivated to carry some of the ideas back into the classroom, introducing a simple meditation exercise, to striking effect. Classes became calmer – ‘no one was silly; no one was disruptive’ – and children from the most chaotic backgrounds asked if they could do more. When other teachers began noticing the effect, Bethune held training classes for them too.

Most schools take part in Anti- Bullying Week, an initiative launched by the NSPCC and the National Children’s Bureau. Believing that the message is ‘quite negative. It doesn’t separate the bullying from the child,’ Bethune restyled it as It’s Cool To Be Kind Week, encouraging the children to perform ‘random acts of kindness’ and reflect on how it made them – and the person they were being kind to – feel. ‘You don’t have to teach children to be kind,’ he says. ‘You just have to give them the opportunity to be kind. So much teaching is box-ticking, paper exercises. I think we have a moral obligation to ensure that children’s well-being is the most important priority. Even the staff were doing random acts of kindness – bringing cakes into school, that sort of thing. Once you sow the seeds for something like that, it spreads of its own accord.’

He adds that the exercise has also had the happy consequence of ‘massively changing my relationship to the stress I was experiencing in class’.

Williamson believes the course is part of a sea change in the way we are coming to regard well-being. ‘As a society a lot of our reaction to stress, anxiety and unhappiness is to wait until people fall off the cliff and then try to pick up the pieces with anti-depressants and in psychiatric wards.

‘What we believe is that you can help people develop better habits before that happens. We’ve got the beginnings now of a culture in preventative approaches to physical health problems, with anti-smoking and obesity drives. I think the next 20 years is going to be about massively proactive ways to look after your mental health and your social and emotional well-being, and to really think about what happiness means and how it can be achieved.

‘Whenever I go to one of these gatherings,’ he adds, ‘I really do come away thinking that life is better than I might have thought that it was.’

Although there is one thing, he acknowledges with a smile, that the course cannot provide: a guarantee.