Meditation

Mindfulness meditation is the foundation of all that we do at the Shambhala Buddhist Meditation Group. Originating from Shakyamuni Buddha, this 2,500 year-old practice of self-discovery is rooted in the simple, but revolutionary premise that every human being has the ability to cultivate the mind's inherent stability, clarity and strength in order to be more awake and compassionate in everyday life.

The key to deepening one's practice and discovering the inherent wakefulness and basic goodness that we all posess is by establishing a daily meditation practice. In addition to our weekly meditation sessions, weekend Shambhala Training intensives, and other events, our center also offers a monthly nyinthun where anyone who wishes may join us for a three-hour sitting session (alternating 20 minutes of sitting meditation with 10 minutes of walking meditation) every fourth Sunday from 9:00am-12pm. These sessions offer a chance to practice meditation with others in a quiet conducive setting for longer periods than we are able to at our open house. In contrast to our regular meditation sessions, the nyinthun does not contain any instruction or discussion (meditation instruction for newcomers will be available upon request). Anyone is welcome to come and go at anytime during the nyinthun period. The general schedule of the day will be opening chants then sitting & walking from 9am-Noon. Exceptions to this schedule will happen when other events are taking place, such as a Shambhala Training weekend. The specific times for these events can be found on our monthly calendar and in our weekly email updates. If you are not receiving these emails and would like to, please add your name and email address on the Home page of this website.

Beginner Meditation and Discussion

The Second Tuesday of Every Month, 6:00pm to 7:00pm.

Please join us on the second Sunday of every month for an introduction to the Shambhala Buddhist Meditation Group. Come and learn about the variety of programs and opportunities for practice offered here, and guidance for beginners is available free of charge. Beginner meditation includes an sitting/walking meditation practice with guidance for beginners and discussion from Pema Chodron, the Sakyong and other teachers.

Meditation Schedule

All are welcome to our weekly and monthly programs as well.

See the monthly calendar for an updated schedule.

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Meditation - Tallahassee Shambhala Meditation Group

However, there was one kind of publicity that he always got in Europe and America, and that was the kind made by the wagging human tongue: gossip. In 1921 he showed up in Constantinople. "His coming to Constantinople," says the British scientist, J. G. Bennett, "was heralded by the usual gossip of the bazaars. Gurdjieff was said to be a great traveler and a linguist who knew all the Oriental languages, reputed by the Moslems to be a convert to Islam, and by the Christians to be a member of some obscure Nestorian sect." In those days Bennett, who is now an expert on coal utilization, was in charge of a British Intelligence section working in Constantinople. He met Gurdjieff and found him neither Moslem nor Christian. Bennett reported that "his linguistic attainments stopped short near the Caspian Sea, so that we could converse only with difficulty in a mixture of Azerbaidjan Tartar and Osmanli Turkish. Nevertheless, he unmistakably possessed knowledge very different from that of the itinerant Sheikhs of Persia and Trans-Caspia, whose arrival in Constantinople had been preceded by similar rumors. It was, above all, astonishing to meet a man, almost unacquainted with any Western European language, possessing a working knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and modern astronomy, and able to make searching comments on the new and fashionable theory of relatively, and also on the psychology of Sigmund Freud."

To Bennett, Gurdjieff didn't look at all like an Eastern sage. He was powerfully builthis neck rippled with musclesand although of only medium height, he was physically dominating. He had a shaven dome, an unlined swarthy face, piercing black eyes, and a tigerish mustache that curled out to big points. In his later years he had a large paunch. But in one respect Gurdjieff's reputation followed the pattern of all the swamis, gurus and masters who have roamed the Western world: his past in the East was veiled in mystery. Only the scantiest facts are known about him before he appeared in Moscow about 1914.

Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol, an Armenian city, in 1866. His father was a kind of local bard. It is said the boy was educated for the priesthood but as a young man he joined a society called Seekers of the Truth, and went with this group on an expedition into Asia. He was in Asia for many years and then came to Moscow where there was talk that he planned to produce a ballet called "The Struggle of the Magicians."

The rest is hearsay. It has been said that the Seekers of the Truth went into the Gobi desert. It has been said that they were checking on Madame Blavatsky'sSecret Doctrine, and at places where she said there were "masters" they found none; whereas at places unspecified by her, they did find "masters." It has been said that Gurdjieff found one teacher under whom he studied for fifteen years and from whom he acquired his most important knowledge. It has been said that several times he became a rich man in the East. This is all hearsay.

A better grade of hearsay centers around Gurdjieff in Tibet. Was he or was he not the chief political officer of the Dalai Lama in 1904 when the British invaded Tibet? According to Achmed Abdullah, the fiction writer, Gurdjieff was the "Dordjieff" to whom the history books make passing reference, supposedly a Russian who influenced the Dalai Lama at the time of the Younghusband Expedition. Abdullah was a member of the British Intelligence assigned to spy on this "Dordjieff," and when Abdullah saw Gurdjieff in New York in 1924, he exclaimed, "That man is Dordjieff!" At any rate, when there were plans in 1922 for Gurdjieff to live in England, it was found that the Foreign Office was opposed, and it was conjectured that their file dated from the time of the trouble between the British government and Tibet. According to rumor, Gurdjieff counseled the Dalai Lama to evacuate Lhasa and let the British sit in an empty city until the heavy snow could close the passes of the Himalayas and cut off the Younghusband expedition. This was done, and the British hurried to make a treaty while their return route was still open.

Much more is known about Gurdjieff after 1914. A recently published book by P. D. Ouspensky which the author calledFragments of a Forgotten Teaching, but which the publisher has renamed In Search of the Miraculous, gives a running account of Ouspensky's relations with Gurdjieff over a ten-year period. Of his first interview with Gurdjieff, Ouspensky says: "Not only did my questions not embarrass him but it seemed to me that he put much more into each answer than I had asked for." By 1916 Ouspensky was holding telepathic conversations with Gurdjieff. He also records one example of Gurdjieff's transfiguring of his whole appearance on a railroad journey, so that a Moscow newspaperman took him to be an impressive "oil king from Baku" and wrote about his unknown fellow passenger. The greater part ofIn Search of the Miraculous consists of the copious notes Ouspensky made on Gurdjieff's lectures in St. Petersburg and Moscow, which give us the only complete and reliable outline of Gurdjieff's system of ideas thus far in print1. It is plain from Ouspensky's exposition that Gurdjieff attempted to convey Eastern knowledge in the thought-forms of the West; he was trying to bridge the gap between Eastern philosophy and Western science.

For us in America the story of Gurdjieff is the story of three men whom I call the "black sheep philosophers." Gurdjieff was the master, and the other twoAlfred Richard Orage who died in the fall of 1934, and Peter Demianovich Ouspensky who died in the fall of 1947were his leading disciples. I call them philosophers; others would call them psychologists; many have called them charlatans. Whatever one names them, they were black sheep: they were looked at askance by the professional philosophers and psychologists because of the different color of their teachings. Nor were they accepted by theosophists, mystics, or various occult professors. They stood apart and their appeal was to what I shall call, for want of a more inclusive word, the intelligentsia.

It is impossible to assimilate Orage, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff into any recognized Western school of thought. The New York obituaries of Gurdjieff called him the "founder of a new religion." It was said that he taught his followers how to attain "peace of mind and calm." This was an attempt to assimilate him. But Gurdjieff claimed no originality for his system and did not organize his followers; furthermore, he did nothing to establish a new religion. As for "peace of mind and calm" There is the incident of an American novelist who calls himself a "naturalistic mystic." In the middle of a dinner with Gurdjieff in Montmarte, this novelist jumped up, shouted, "I think you are the Devil!" and rushed from the restaurant. The truth is that Gurdjieff violated all our preconceptions of a "spiritual leader" and sometimes repelled "religious seekers."

In my view, the man was an enigma, and that means that my estimate must necessarily be a suspended estimate. The supposition that he was founding a religion will not hold up. And I do not believe he was a devil out of the pages of Dostoevski. There is an old saying that a teacher is to be judged by his pupils, and by that test Gurdjieff had knowledge that two of the strongest minds in our period wanted to acquire. These minds belonged to the English editor, A.R. Orage, and the Russian mathematical philosopher, P.D. Ouspensky. Both surrendered to Gurdjieff. Let us look at the disciples and then come to their teacher.

ORAGE, a Yorkshireman, bought a small London weekly, The New Age, in 1906. From then until 1922, when he relinquished the paper and went to Fontainebleau where Gurdjieff had his headquarters, Orage made journalistic history. He was remarkable for finding and coaching new writers. Among these was Katherine Mansfield, who acknowledged her great indebtedness to him as a literary mentor. Another was Michael Arlen, who once dedicated a novel to Orage in terms like these: "To A.R. Orageslow to form a friendship but never hesitant about making an enemy." Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton, Hilarie Belloc and Arnold Bennett debated with each other in The New Age, and Shaw called Orage a "desperado of genius."

The New Age was more than a literary review. It played a lively role in British political and economic movements. It began by being highly critical of Fabianism, then took a positive turn by advocating National Guilds, or Guild Socialism, as the Guilds movement was popularly called. With A.G. Penty and S.G. Hobson, Orage was one of the prime instigators of the National Guilds movement, but he always had a lingering doubt of the practicability of its platforms and in 1919 he dropped it and joined with Major C.H. Douglas to found the Social Credit movement. With him went many of the more brilliant Guild Socialists, to the mortification of G.D.H. Cole who denounced the "Douglas-New Age heresy."

To literature and economics, Orage added a sustained interest in occultism, and it was this that finally led him to Gurdjieff's Chteau du Prieur at Fontainebleau-Avon. Nietzsche had extended the horizons of Orage's thought during his formative years, and Orage's weekly became a forum for Nietzscheans. He himself wrote two small books on that grossly misunderstood philosopher which remain the clearest expositions yet penned of the superman doctrine. On the spoor of the superman, Orage investigated theosophy, psychical research, and Indian literature, and he wrote one book,Consciousness: Animal, Human and Superman, which hinted at the mental exercises he practiced to enlarge and elevate consciousness. T.S. Eliot called Orage the finest critical intelligence of his generation, which is an assurance to the reader that Orage was no gull in his excursions into mysticism. In 1922, at the age of forty-nine, he cut all ties in England, went to Gurdjieff at Fontainebleau-Avon, and was set to digging trenches and washing casseroles.

At that time Gurdjieff'sInstitute for the Harmonious Development of Man was in full swing. With funds provided by Lady Rothermere, Gurdjieff had acquired the historic Chteau du Prieur, once the residence of Madame de Maintenon, the consort of Louis Quatorze, and in latter years the property of Labori, the attorney for the exonerated French officer, Dreyfus. The institute provided a thorough work-out for the three "centers" of human psychology. Its members engaged in hard physical tasks ranging from long hours of kitchen drudgery to the felling of trees in the chateau's forest. Unusual situations, friction between members, and music insured great activity for the emotional "center." For the mental "center" there were exercises that often had to be performed concurrently with physical tasks. An airplane hangar had been set up on the grounds. This was known as the "study house" and was the scene for instruction in complicated dance movements. There were mottoes on the walls of the "study house." One of them in translation read: "You cannot be too skeptical." This was the milieu the brilliant English editor entered to become a kitchen scullion.

In 1924 Gurdjieff came to America with forty pupilsEnglish and Russianand gave public demonstrations of dervish dances, temple dances, and sacred gymnastics. Orage came along but did not perform the movements, although he had practiced them for a Paris demonstration. Nothing like these dances had ever been seen in New York, and they aroused intense interest. They called for great precision in execution and required extraordinary coordination. One could well believe they were, as claimed, written in an exact language, even though one could not read that language but only received an effect of wakefulness quite different from the pleasant sense of harmony most art produces. When Gurdjieff and his pupils sailed for France, Orage was left in New York to organize groups for the study of Gurdjieff's system, and for the next seven years he was engaged in this task.

Let me call up from memory one of the evenings Orage talked to a group in New York. The place is a large room above a garage on East Fortieth Street. It is Muriel Draper's flat and there is a bizarre note in its furnishings produced by the gilt throne from a production ofHamlet which Mrs. Draper had picked up. In those days Mrs. Draper was the "music at midnight" hostess she had been in Florence and London. By nine o'clock about seventy people had gathered. Let us look around the room. Seated well back is Herbert Croly, the founder and editor of the New Republic, an admirer of Auguste Comte and therefore a rationalist. A few rows in front is Carl Zigrosser, the print expert. Well off to one side is Amos Pinchot, the liberal publicist, and just coming in we see John O'Hara Cosgrave, the Sunday editor of the New York World. Near the front sits Helen Westley of the Theatre Guild, and always on the front row is the historical novelist Mary Johnston. Squatting on the floor up front with an Indian blanket around his shoulders is impassive Tony, the full-blooded Indian husband of Mabel Dodge Luhan, and near him, but seated on a chair is the celebrated memoirist herself; she is reputed to have bought one of the $12,000 "shares" of Gurdjieff's Institute. Now arriving is Dr. Louis Berman, the authority on glands, and just behind him waves the handsome beard of the painter Boardman Robinson. It is the sort of crowd you might find on the opening night ofStrange Interlude, which is currently playing on Broadway. Some of the men you would see at the luncheons of the Dutch Treat Club; some of the women at the meetings of that advanced exclusive group called "Heterodoxy." A worldly crowd, a 1920-ish crowd, for in retrospect the 1920's seems a period vibrating with intellectual curiosity.

Orage comes in a little after nine. Deliberately, he is always a little late, and often he takes a snifter of bootleg gin in Mrs. Draper's kitchen before entering the big room. He is tall, with a strong Yorkshireman's frame, an alert face, an elephantine nose, sensitive mouth, hair still dark. He is a chain-smoker throughout the meeting. He calls for questions. Someone asks about "self-observation," someone wants to know "what this system teaches about death," someone else makes a long speech that terminates in a question about psychoanalysis. After he has five or six questions, Orage begins to talkand he talks well in lucid sentences often glinting with wit. A graduate student in psychology at Columbia objects to one of his remarks. Orage handles the objection and goes on until a progressive schoolteacher interjects a question. It is like a Socratic dialogue, with Orage elucidating a single topic from all sides. Every question eventually gets back to "the method," and by eleven o'clock he has once again illuminated the method of self-observation with non-identification that appears to be the starting procedure prescribed by Gurdjieff for self-study.

Briefly, what Orage has said is that man is a mechanical being. He cannot do anything. He has no will. His organism acts without his concurrent awareness and he identifies himself with various parts of this victim of circumstances, his organism. There is only one thing he can try to do. He can try to observe the physical behavior of his organism while at the same time not identifying his 'I' with it. Later he can attempt to observe his emotions and thoughts. The trouble is that he can only fleetingly observe with non-identification, but he must continue to make the effort. It is claimed that this method differs from introspection. The non-identifying feature differentiates it from an apperception. The man who finally succeeds in developing the power of self-observation is on the path to self-knowledge and the actualizing of a higher state of consciousness. This higher state, which Orage calls "Self-consciousness" or "Individuality," stands to our present waking state as the waking state stands to our state of sleep.

This bare summary will not, of course, explain why so many New Yorkers came to hear Orage between 1924 and 1931. Some came only once or twice out of a weak curiosity, like Heywood Broun who listened through one meeting, then asked, "When do we get to sex?" and shuffled off, never to return. Others were fascinated by the charm and keenness of Orage's literary personality and found such epigrams as "H. G. Wells is an ordinary man with a carbuncle of genius" full compensation for the dissertations on psychology they sat through. But the solid core of his group were probably the people who prefer Plato to Aristotle; that is, people who feel that there is some kind of film over reality and respond to the idea that this film can be penetrated.

In 1931 Orage faced a personal crisis. He had married an American girl and had an infant son. Gurdjieff, a hard task-maker, wanted him to bring his family to the Chteau du Prieur and continue work on the translation into English of the huge book then called Tales of Beelzebub to His Grandson, which Gurdjieff had written partly in Russian and partly in Armenian. Orage neither wanted to leave his family nor to put them in the never-stable environment of Fontainebleau-Avon. He decided to go to London and there founded theNew English Weekly. On Guy Fawkes Day [Nov. 5] in 1934, he who had never addressed more than a few thousand readers addressed hundreds of thousands of B.B.C. listeners with a speech on Social Credit, went home, and died before morning.

THE link between Orage and Gurdjieff was originally P. D. Ouspensky, who came to London in 1921 and started groups for the study of the Gurdjieff system. Orage attended these, as did Katherine Mansfield, and both went to the source at Fontainebleau. As explained by Ouspensky, there were three main ways to a higher development of man: the way of the fakir who struggles with the physical body, the way of the monk who subjects all other emotions to the emotion of faith, and the way of the yogi who develops his mind. But these ways produce lopsided men; they produce the "stupid fakir," the "silly saint," the "weak yogi." There is a fourth way, that of Gurdjieff, in which the student continues in his usual life-circumstances but strives for a harmonious development of his physical, emotional and intellectual lifethe non-monastic "way of the sly man." The accent was on harmonious, all-around development.

Ouspensky was a highly mental type. At his lectures in New York he seemed like a European professor. He was not nervous in manner and he had a peculiar kind of emotional serenity; one felt that it did not matter to him what his listeners thought of him. In his youth he had been fascinated by the problem of the fourth dimension, the nature of time, and the doctrine of recurrence. When only thirty-one, he wrote a book,The Fourth Dimension, which was recognized as a contribution to abstract mathematical theory. He also practiced journalism for a St. Petersburg newspaper. At thirty-four, he completed the book on which his popular fame rests,Tertium Organum. This book had a great influence on the American poet, Hart Crane, an influence Brom Weber has carefully traced in his biography of Crane. ButTertium Organum is a pre-Gurdjieffian work, and much of it has to be reset in a later pattern of Ouspensky's thought, as he implied in a cryptic note inserted after the early editions. Ouspensky also wrote a short book on the tarot cards, which are surmised to contain occult meaning.

The young Russian thinker attempted to be practical about his speculative thinking. He made trips to Egypt, India and Ceylon in search of keys to knowledge. He experimented with drugs, fasting and breathing exercises to induced higher states of consciousness. When he met Gurdjieff in Moscow in 1914, he was ripe for a teacher.

As the years went on, Ouspensky began to make a distinction between Gurdjieff the man and the ideas conveyed by Gurdjieff. Remaining true to the ideas, he finally decided about 1924 to teach independently of the man Gurdjieff. The last chapter of In Search of the Miraculous, deals with this "break," but it is too reticent to make the "break" understood.

Ouspensky held groups in London throughout the 1920's and 1930's, and had a place outside London for his more devoted pupils, some of whom were quite wealthy. When the bombs began to rain on England, he and a number of his English pupils migrated to America and purchased Franklin Farms, a large estate at Mendham, New Jersey. In New York he lectured to shifting groups of sixty or so, while at Mendham his wife supervised the pupils who carried out farm and household tasks as part of their psychological training. Instruction in the Gurdjieff dance movements was also given at Mendham.

Ouspensky's later books have includedA New Model of the Universe, begun in pre-Gurdjieff days but revised and completed under his influence, and a novel,Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, which has a flavor that reminds one of Gogol. Although Ouspensky has written extensively on relativity, the professional physicists appear to have given him a cold shoulder; at least, he is never mentioned in scientific literature. However,A New Model of the Universe produced a great impression on the novelist J.B. Priestly, who wrote one of his most enthusiastic essays2 about it.

GURDJIEFF was by far the most dramatic of the trio; in fact, Gurdjieff as a pedagogue was mainly an improvising dramatist, a difficult aspect of his character to explain briefly. Most people believe that they can make decisions. They believe that when they say "Yes" or "No" in regard to a course of action, they mean "Yes" or "No." They think they are sincere and can carry out their promises and know their own minds. Gurdjieff did not lecture them on the illusion of free will. Instead, in conversation with a person, he would produce a situation, usually trivial and sometimes absurd, in which that person would hesitate, perhaps say "Yes," then change to "No," become paralyzed between choices like Zeno's famous donkey starving between two equidistant bales of hay, and end full of doubt about any "decision" reached. If the person afterwards looked at the little scene he had been put through, he saw that his usual "Yes" or "No" had no weight; that, in fact, he had drifted as the psychological breezes blew.

Often, in his early acquaintance with a person, Gurdjieff would hit upon one or both of two "nerves" which produced agitation. These were the "pocketbook nerve" and the "sex nerve." He would, as our slang goes, "put the bee on somebody for some dough," or he might, as he did with one priest from Greece, egg him on to tell a series of ribald jokes. The event often proved that he didn't need the money he had been begging for. As for the poor priest, when he had outdone himself with an anecdote, Gurdjieff deflated him with the disgusted remark, "Now you are dirty!" and turned away. "I wished to show him he was not true priest," Gurdjieff said afterwards. To go for the "pocketbook nerve" or the "sex nerve" was to take a short cut to a person's psychology; instead of working through the surfaces, Gurdjieff immediately got beneath them. "Nothing shows up people so much," he once said, "as their attitude toward money."

There are legends about how Gurdjieff came by the large sums of money he freely spent. It has been rumored that he earned money by hypnotic treatment of rich drug addicts. There used to be a tale that he owned a restaurant, or even a small chain of restaurants, in Paris. His fortunes varied extremely, and there were times when he had little money. He lost his chateau at Fontainebleau-Avon in the early 1930's. His expenses were large and included the support of a score or two of adherents. He tipped on a fabulous scale. Money never stuck to his fingers but he himself did not lead a luxurious life. He joked with his pupils about his financial needs and openly called his money-raising maneuvers "shearing sheep."

When the Bolshevik revolution struck Russia, Gurdjieff moved south. He halted at various places, notably at Tiflis, to launch groups, but eventually he and his followers crossed the Caucasian mountains on foot and made their way to Constantinople. Via Germany, he reached France where, as related, Lady Rothermere enabled him to found the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Chteau du Prieur. This Institute, Orage once told me, was to have made Bacon's project for an Academy for the Advancement of Learning look like a rustic school. But in 1924, Gurdjieff met with an automobile accident which nearly killed him, and thereafter he turned to the less strenuous activity of writing. The Institute plans were canceled, and he began the tales of Beelzebub as told to his grandson on a ship in interstellar space. This book is a huge parable with chapters on the engulfed civilization of Atlantis, the "law of three" and the "law of seven," objective art, and many riddles of man's history. It purports to be an impartial criticism of the life of man on the planet Earth. In this period Gurdjieff also composed many pieces of music, making original use of ancient scales and rhythms.

In the last year or two of his long life, Gurdjieff finished with his writings and intensified his direct contacts with his followers. Movement classes were started in Paris, and several hundred Frenchmen now come more or less regularly to these and other meetings. In England the exposition of Gurdjieff's ideas is carried on by the mathematical physicist, J. G. Bennett3. Bennett is the author ofThe Crisis in Human Affairs, an introduction to the Gurdjieff system. It is said that Bennett attracts about three hundred to his lectures and that the class in movements numbers nearly two hundred.

Gurdjieff spent the winter of 194849 in New York, as usual unnoticed by the press. The remnant of the old Orage groups came to him, as did the Ouspenskyites from Mendham and many new people. With Oriental hospitality, he provided supper night after night for seventy and upwards in his big suite at the Hotel Wellington, the supper being punctuated by toasts in armagnac to various kinds of idiots: "health ordinary idiots," "health candidates for idiots," "health squirming idiots," "health compassionate idiots." When Gurdjieff drank water, he always proposed, "health wise man." Prepositions were left out of the toasts; Gurdjieff spoke a simplified English that often required an effort to follow. After the supper, Gurdjieff's writings were read until the small hours of the morning. While he was here, he signed a contract with a New York publisher to bring out in 1950 the English version of the 1000-page tales of Beelzebub, under the title All and Everything. It is also expected that after the book appears, his American pupils will give a public demonstration of the dance movements.

Gurdjieff had passage booked for America last October but fell gravely ill. An American doctor flew to Paris, had him removed to the American Hospital, and made him comfortable. "Bravo, America!" he said to the doctor. "Now we can have a cup of coffee." Those were his last words.

How shall I sum up this strange man? A twentieth century Cagliostro? But the evidence about Cagliostro is conflicting, and the stories you will hear about Gurdjieff are highly conflicting. I can personally vouch for his astonishing capacity for work. Two to four hours' sleep seemed sufficient for him; yet he always appeared to have abundant energy for a day spent in writing, playing an accordion-harmonium, motoring, caf conversation, cooking. Those who had to keep up with him were sometimes ready to drop from fatigue, but he seemed inexhaustible after twenty hours and fresh the next morning from a short sleep. He was eighty-three this last winter at the Hotel Wellington. He would retire at three or four in the morning. Around seven the elevator boys would take him down and he would go over to his "office," a Child's restaurant on upper Fifth Avenue. Here, as at a European cafe, he would receive callers all morning.

I have sometimes asked myself what our civilization of specialists would make of certain men of the Renaissancemen like Roger Bacon, a forerunner, and Francis Bacon and Paracelsus who came at the heightif they reappeared among us. I think we would find them baffling, and it would be their many-sidedness that would puzzle us. The biographers and historians have never quite known how to take their scandalous unorthodoxy. To me Gurdjieff was an enigma whom I associate with the stranger figures of the Renaissance rather than with religious leaders. He never claimed originality for his ideas but asserted they came from ancient science transmitted in esoteric schools. His humor was Rabelaisian, his roles were dramatic, his impact on people was upsetting. Sentimentalists came, expecting to find in him a resemblance to the pale Christ-figure literature has concocted, and went away swearing that Gurdjieff was a dealer in black magic. Scoffers came, and some remained to wonder if Gurdjieff knew more about relativity than Einstein.

"A Pythagorean Greek," Orage called him, thus connecting the prominence given to numbers in the Gurdjieffian system with Gurdjieff's descent from Ionian Greeks who had migrated to Turkey. Perhaps this appellation, "Pythagorean Greek," is as short a way as any to indicate the strangeness of Gurdjieff to our civilization, which has never been compared to Greece in its great period from the sixth to the fourth centuries before Christ.

How shall we account for the interest persons of metropolitan culture in the Western world have shown in the Eastern ideas of Gurdjieff and his transmitters, Orage and Ouspensky? One explanation is easy, and it holds for people who seek respite for their personal unhappiness in psychoanalysis, pseudo-religious cults, and the worship of the group (nostrism as manifested in Communism and Fascism). This is the therapeutic interest, and many who have come to the Gurdjieffian meetings have had it. Let us disregard this common interest and ask why Eastern ideas have attracted in these years the interest of sophisticated thinkers like Aldous Huxley who has been remarkable for his typicality. The answer here is that Western culture is in crisis. Ours is a period of two world wars and one world depression. In this period it has been impossible for a thoughtful person not to have been deeply disappointed in his hopes for man. He has seen one effort after another produce an unintended result. World War I made the world unsafe for democracy. The prosperity of the 1920's led to economic drought. World War II turned into cold war. The socialist dream flickered into a totalitarian nightmare. Science becomes an agency of destruction. The doctrine of progress gives place to the feeling the Western man is at a standstill. In a crisis one hopes or one despairs. Gurdjieff, Orage and Ouspensky confirmed the despair but simultaneously raised the hope of Westerners whose mood was disappointment over the resources of their culture. It is said that Aldous Huxley, that modern of moderns, went to a few Ouspensky meetings in London. Eventually Huxley settled for Gerald Heard who draws heavily on Eastern philosophy. In Huxley we may find a symptom of a desperate tendency to turn in our crisis to ideas and teachings that stand outside the stream of Western culture. Orage, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff painted a crisis-picturein one part as black as any school of Western pessimism, in another part so bright as early Christianity. In this balance-by-contrast of the dark and the light is a principal reason for their appeal to moderns.

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Black Sheep Philosophers - Gurdjieff

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training. After working in an estate agent's office for a while he moved to London as a young man (1876), where he established himself as a leading music and theatre critic in the eighties and nineties and became a prominent member of the Fabian Society, for which he composed many pamphlets. He began his literary career as a novelist; as a fervent advocate of the new theatre of Ibsen (The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891) he decided to write plays in order to illustrate his criticism of the English stage. His earliest dramas were called appropriately Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898). Among these, Widower's Houses and Mrs. Warren's Profession savagely attack social hypocrisy, while in plays such as Arms and the Man and The Man of Destiny the criticism is less fierce. Shaw's radical rationalism, his utter disregard of conventions, his keen dialectic interest and verbal wit often turn the stage into a forum of ideas, and nowhere more openly than in the famous discourses on the Life Force, Don Juan in Hell, the third act of the dramatization of woman's love chase of man, Man and Superman (1903).

In the plays of his later period discussion sometimes drowns the drama, in Back to Methuselah (1921), although in the same period he worked on his masterpiece Saint Joan (1923), in which he rewrites the well-known story of the French maiden and extends it from the Middle Ages to the present.

Other important plays by Shaw are Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), a historical play filled with allusions to modern times, and Androcles and the Lion (1912), in which he exercised a kind of retrospective history and from modern movements drew deductions for the Christian era. In Major Barbara (1905), one of Shaw's most successful discussion plays, the audience's attention is held by the power of the witty argumentation that man can achieve aesthetic salvation only through political activity, not as an individual. The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), facetiously classified as a tragedy by Shaw, is really a comedy the humour of which is directed at the medical profession. Candida (1898), with social attitudes toward sex relations as objects of his satire, and Pygmalion (1912), a witty study of phonetics as well as a clever treatment of middle-class morality and class distinction, proved some of Shaw's greatest successes on the stage. It is a combination of the dramatic, the comic, and the social corrective that gives Shaw's comedies their special flavour.

Shaw's complete works appeared in thirty-six volumes between 1930 and 1950, the year of his death.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

George Bernard Shaw died on November 2, 1950.

To cite this page MLA style: "George Bernard Shaw - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 4 Oct 2015. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1925/shaw-bio.html>

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George Bernard Shaw - Biographical

Read books online at our other site: The Literature Page - Read the works of George Bernard Shaw online at The Literature Page A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman. George Bernard Shaw A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic. George Bernard Shaw A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. George Bernard Shaw A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. George Bernard Shaw A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth. George Bernard Shaw Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them. George Bernard Shaw An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means.There is no such thing in the country. George Bernard Shaw Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men. George Bernard Shaw Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. George Bernard Shaw England and America are two countries separated by a common language. George Bernard Shaw Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough. George Bernard Shaw Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. George Bernard Shaw Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich--something for nothing. George Bernard Shaw Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history. George Bernard Shaw Hell is full of musical amateurs. George Bernard Shaw I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize. George Bernard Shaw I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. George Bernard Shaw If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. George Bernard Shaw If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience. George Bernard Shaw If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved. George Bernard Shaw

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George Bernard Shaw Quotes - The Quotations Page

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, socialist, and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama. Over the course of his life he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his plays address prevailing social problems, but each also includes a vein of comedy that makes their stark themes more palatable. In these works Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

An ardent socialist, Shaw was angered by what he perceived to be the exploitation of the working class. He wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Societ

An ardent socialist, Shaw was angered by what he perceived to be the exploitation of the working class. He wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. For a short time he was active in local politics, serving on the London County Council.

In 1898, Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner.

He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938). The former for his contributions to literature and the latter for his work on the film "Pygmalion" (adaptation of his play of the same name). Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright, as he had no desire for public honours, but he accepted it at his wife's behest. She considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books to English.

Shaw died at Shaw's Corner, aged 94, from chronic health problems exacerbated by injuries incurred by falling.

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George Bernard Shaw (Author of Pygmalion)

As far as pubs go in Dublin, this is hands down my favourite. Far from the typical Irish pub experience, this place is truly one of a kind. It feels like the type of place that in any other city in the world would be overrun and packed to the brim with hipsters who'd have appropriated the place as their own. At the Bernard Shaw however, it manages to capture the exact vibe - a funky interior decor, eclectic & artsy and yet somehow not being pretentious at the same time.

The place is always busy regardless of when you go here, but somehow never too busy and you always get served pretty fast. Their selection of beers is solid and there are cocktails on offer as well and there is often a 2-4-1 deal going on with 2 cocktails for 10 Euro - bargain!

The magic of this place though happens as soon as you step out the back. It is the one place in Dublin where no matter the season, out the back in the yard is where you need to be. The communal seating out the back is great, it's always heated and despite the smokers if you're a non-smoker like me you don't feel the smoke at all and can still relax. With the same street art type layout as you get indoors, this is the type of place you could really just sit and chill with your friends for hours on end, play some pool or just chat with some randoms in your surrounds.

Now if you're hungry, then comes the icing on the cake: order your pizza off the counter on the big blue bus. Yes, you read that right. The big blue bus, a double decker turned hang out spot where you order and have your pizza prepared (and with pizzas starting from 7 Euro, the prices are a real win too), and you can head upstairs, sit on the bus, drink your pint and eat your pizza in relative cosy isolation as you look out at the buzz in the courtyard below. The bus too is decorated in a sort of vintage style with dimmed lamps, cushions and the likes, it's a great spot to eat, drink and chat with mates.

Off the main tourist trail and yet still close to the centre of town this place is always a favourite. Great for an afternoon chillout or an evening out with friends alike. And with brunches in the morning and of late Saturday afternoon yoga sessions out the back you can't really go wrong here. That's why I keep coming back!

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The Bernard Shaw - 135 Photos - Bars - Harcourt - Dublin ...

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit paleontologist who worked to understand evolution and faith. He was born May 1, 1881, and died on April 10, 1955.Between these days Teilhard fully participated in a life that included priesthood, living and working in the front lines of war, field work exploring the early origins of the human race, and adventurous travels of discovery in the backlands of China. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin also participated fully in an intellectual life through the development of his imaginative, mystical writings on the evolutionary nature of the world and the cosmos.

Teilhard suffered from the rejection of his writings by ecclesiastical authorities andperhaps felt more severely by himby the Jesuit leadership. In his thinking and writing Teilhard studied the intimate relationship between the evolutionary development of the material and the spiritual world, leading him to celebrate the sacredness of matter infused with the Divine presence.

Teilhards interest in the world of nature began when he was a child. As he grew up he studied geology and the natural sciences. After he entered the Jesuits, he was ready to give up these interests in order to devote himself to his spiritual vocation. But Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was dissuaded by his wise Jesuit spiritual director, who advised him that following his intellectual interests also gave glory to God. Through his theological studies and continued studies in the natural sciences, Teilhard sought to create intellectual space in which the physical and spiritual world could be appreciated for their unique contribution to human life.

Teilhards thinking was tested in the midst of the first great tragedy of the 20th century, World War I. Although he was ordained a priest in 1911, Pierre was drafted into the French army in 1914. He turned down a commission in order to serve as a stretcher bearer, serving in many of the major battles including Champaign, Verdun, and the second Battle of the Marne. Teilhard served heroically, winning the Croix the Guerre and the Chevalier de la Legion dHonneur. In the midst of this slaughter and crippling of millions of men, Teilhards faith was shaken. But his insight into the evolving flow of history helped him to see, even in the midst of human tragedy, a sense of communion with the world and communion with God united in the crucified Christ.

After the war, Teilhard went on to receive a doctorate in geology from the Sorbonne. His developing insights on the nature of evolution did not sit well with a hierarchy uncomfortable with the idea of evolution and its spiritual consequences. So in 1923 Teilhard was given permission to go to China to do paleontological work in the backcountry around Beijing (Peking). Teilhard spent many of the 23 years between 1923 and 1946 doing fieldwork in China under the most primitive conditions.

Expeditions took him to difficult areas where he endured blistering heat, icy blizzards, poor food, sandstorms, snakes, flash floods, marauding bandits, civil war, political intrigue, bribery, and maddening policy changes leveled by unstable governments.

(Foreword to The Divine Milieu, Thomas King , SJ, newly revised translation by Sion Cowell, xvii)

No matter how trying the times, Teilhard continued to develop his positive vision by writing some of his most important works: The Divine Milieu (1927), The Vision of the Past (1935), Building the Earth (1937), The Phenomena of Man (1940), and The Future of Man (1941). Teilhards efforts to receive ecclesiastical approval for the publication of The Phenomena of Man failed, and he was also denied the opportunity to teach in France. With his health failing, Teilhard traveled to South America and South Africa tracing further discoveries of the evolutionary journey. He finally settled at St. Ignatius Parish in New York City where he died peacefully Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955.

By Jim Campbell

It is through the collaboration which he solicits from us that Christ, starting from all creatures, is consummated and attains his plenitude. St. Paul himself tells us so. We may, perhaps, imagine that Creation was finished long ago. But that would be quite wrong. It continues in still more magnificent form in the highest zones of the world.Our role is to help complete it, if only by the humble work of our hands. This is the real meaning and the price of our acts. Owing to the interrelation between matter, soul, and Christ, we lead part of the being which he desires back to God in whatever we do. With each of our works, we labor automatically but really to build the Pleroma, which is to say we help towards the fulfillment of Christ. (The Divinization of Our Activities in Modern Catholic Thinkers [Vol. 1], New York: Harper 1960.)

Lord Christ, you who are divine energy and living irresistible might: since of the two of us it is you who are infinitely the stronger, it is you who must set me ablaze and transmute me into fire that we may be welded together and made one. Grant me, then, something even more precious than that grace for which all your faithful followers pray: to receive communion as I die is not sufficient: teach me to make a communion of death itself. (Hymn of the Universe, NY: Harper and Row 1965.)

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20th-Century Ignatian Voices

21st-Century Ignatian Voices

More Being: The Emergence of Teilhard de Chardin / Teilhard at Vespers (PDF)

By John F. Haught / Editors at America Magazine

Haught shows how Teilhards ideas about the future of the cosmos influenced the evolutionary vision of the Vatican II document The Church in the Modern World (1965).

The PDF also includes a reflection by the editors of America on Teilhards vision of human work contributing to the consecration of the world to God.

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ - IgnatianSpirituality.com

Belief We have only to believe. And the more threatening and irreducible reality appears, the more firmly and desperately we must believe. Then, little by little, we shall see the universal horror unbend, and then smile upon us, and then take us in its more than human arms. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Duty Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Evolution Evolution is gaining the psychic zones of the world... life, being and ascent of consciousness, could not continue to advance indefinitely along its line without transforming itself in depth. The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence, of that very doubling back upon himself becomes in a flash able to raise himself to a new sphere. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Friends The world is round so that friendship may encircle it. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Generosity The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Humanity We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Life In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Love Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fulfill them... for it alone joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Someday, after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energy of love; and for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Potential It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Spirituality You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Unity We are one, after all, you and I. Together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes :: Quoteland ...

I admire your optimism. At a time when many, if not most, investors are fixated on market volatility and worried about losing their shirts should the market melt down in the not-too-distant future, you're thinking about saving and investing for the long-term.

But as much as I like your upbeat outlook, I think you also need to temper it with some realism. Ending up with a $1 million IRA, traditional or Roth, isn't a pipe dream. A General Accounting Office report released last year found that some 630,000 IRAs had balances greater than $1 million. But the GAO also found that 99% of IRAs had balances below the $1 million mark, with a median account balance of just $34,000.

And the IRAs that did have seven-figure balances weren't funded solely by yearly contributions. The balances included money inherited from other IRAs as well as money that had been rolled over from 401(k)s and defined-benefit plans. Indeed, the GAO notes that it would have required double-digit returns greater than the Standard & Poor's 500-index actually delivered to hit the $1 million mark from annual IRA contributions alone.

I think it's fair to say that this isn't a goal you should expect to reach quickly, especially considering that you are starting to fund an IRA at a time when some experts are predicting subpar returns. ETF guru Rick Ferri has forecast a 7% annual long-term return for stocks and roughly 4% for Treasury bonds, assuming 2% inflation.

If you make the current $5,500 IRA maximum contribution every year and earn a 6% return each year, it would take 42 years for your IRA balance to reach $1 million. You'd actually get there several years sooner, assuming you contribute the IRA maximum as it increases with inflation and also begin making catch-up contributions (an additional $1,000 a year currently) once you hit age 50. Either way, we're talking about a very long time.

But while your $1 million goal may be daunting, that doesn't mean it's not achievable, or that you shouldn't try. The key is to go about it the right way.

Your main focus should be on saving as much as you can. Assuming you have sufficient income and the discipline to save, there's no reason you should limit yourself to funding just an IRA. In fact, by expanding your savings effort to a workplace plan such as a 401(k), where annual contribution limits are a lot higher ($18,000 this year, plus a $6,000 catch-up for people 50 and up), you can build a bigger balance much more quickly, and roll that money into an IRA later on.

For example, if you fund both a 401(k) and an IRA to the current max not including catch-upsi.e, invest $18,000 in a 401(k) plus $5,500 in an IRA for a total of $23,500 a yearyou would have a $1 million combined balance in 22 years, assuming a 6% annual return. That's too ambitious a savings goal for most people. And even if you could manage it, you would also want to confirm you're eligible to fund both an IRA and a 401(k) without resorting to the "back-door" route to a Roth IRA, which you can check by going to Morningstar's IRA Calculator. But the idea is that you'll have a larger balance and increase your odds of getting to seven figures if you save more than the IRA contribution limit.

The way you invest your savings will also determine the eventual balance of your IRA. Clearly, higher returns will lead to a larger balance more quickly. For example, if you earn 8% a year instead of 6%, it will take you 35 years instead of 42 to achieve a $1 million balance investing $5,500 a year in an IRA, and 19 years instead of 22 if you invest a combined $23,500 a year in a 401(k) and IRA.

Related: An investing strategy for a $1 million retirement nest egg

But earning more on your savings isn't just a matter of dialing up a higher return. You've also got to take more risk, and that increases the volatility of your portfolio and raises the possibility that your balance could get hammered if the market nosedives. If you panic and sell during such a meltdown, you could very well end up with a lower return than you would have earned with a less aggressive strategy.

A better approach: go with a portfolio that will give you a shot at realistic gains but you'll also be comfortable sticking with during major market setbacks. You can create such a portfolio by completing a risk tolerance test. Vanguard offers an asset allocation-risk tolerance tool that will recommend a mix of stocks and bonds based on your answers to 11 questions designed to gauge the level of risk you're comfortable taking. The tool will also show you how the recommended portfolio, as well as others more conservative and more aggressive, performed in both good and bad markets, so you can decide which is the best fit for you.

Related: 2 ways to a more secure retirement

As for choosing investments for your portfolio, I recommend you focus mostly, if not exclusively, on broadly diversified low-cost index funds or ETFs, many of which charge just 0.20% of assets or less in annual expenses. The reason is simple. The less of your return you give up to fees, the more quickly your savings are likely to grow, and the more likely you'll reach your ambitious goal.

One final note: For whatever reason, you seem to have decided to do a Roth IRA. You should know, however, that a Roth isn't automatically a superior option just because qualified withdrawals are tax-free. Generally, a Roth is a better deal than a traditional IRA if you expect to be in the same or higher tax bracket when you withdraw your contributions and investment earnings in retirement. But if you think you'll face a lower marginal tax rate in retirement, you may be better off doing a traditional IRA. Given that it's difficult for most people to tell what tax rate they'll face many years in the future, it can make sense to hedge your bets by keeping some money in both Roth and traditional accounts.

The most important thing, though, is to save diligently and invest whatever you manage to save in a portfolio you'll be able to stick with whether the market is soaring or slumping. Do that, and you'll know you've taken your best shot at achieving a secure retirement, even if you fall short of your $1 million goal.

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How to save $1 million for retirement using an IRA - Sep. 30 ...

A recent study found that retirees experience an immediate boost in happiness, and the positive effects remain four years after their final day on the job.

The news seems to be filled with doom and gloom predictions about what baby boomers will face in retirement. Study after study says those who are heading into their final working years have skimpy savings which will, undoubtedly, lead to unsatisfying golden years.

However, a study from researchers at George Mason University and Utah State University offers hope for boomers who are worried they are facing a dismal retirement. Using data from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, researchers discovered retiring is associated with not only a marked increase in happiness but also improved health.

"In some ways, it is surprising," says Sita Slavov, a public policy professor at George Mason University and co-author of the 2014 report. "You hear anecdotes of people who end up hating retirement. But it's also important to keep in mind that we are looking at the effect of retirement for the average person."

Happiness Is Immediate, Health Takes a While

One of the chief takeaways of Slavov's research is that people report an immediate uptick in happiness after retirement. While other research has recorded the same phenomenon, those studies typically indicate that happiness regressed and flattened over time. However, the George Mason and Utah State University research found the positive impact of retirement still remained four years after a person left the workforce.

Good health, on the other hand, took four years to arrive for retirees. "We suspect it's because health changes slowly," Slovav says. "It takes time for lifestyle changes to show up in the form of improved health."

Slovav adds that her team looked into whether health and happiness outcomes differed based on a person's type of work. However, there were no significant differences between those who reported having physically demanding jobs and other workers.

"One other interesting thing." Slovav says, "[is] we didn't find any evidence of long-term changes in health care utilization i.e. doctor visits and prescription drug use after retirement. So the improvements in health do not appear to be associated with increased health care costs."

A Happy Retirement Without Much Cash

While Slavov's findings seem to make a strong case for early retirement, doing so may feel like an unattainable dream for workers with limited savings. Fortunately, finance experts say you don't need a huge nest egg to have a happy retirement.

"Happiness is a positive cash flow," says Ken Moraif, founder and senior advisor of Dallas-based financial firm Money Matters. He argues that people with modest means who keep their expenses low can be happier than those who have more money coming in each month but spend it all. "You can have fancy cars and fancy houses, but you're going to be miserable all the time," he says of the latter group.

Feeling in control of the future may also be a factor that helps fuel retiree happiness, regardless of the size of a bank account. Andrew Meadows, vice president of brand + culture at Ubiquity Retirement + Savings and producer of the documentary "Broken Eggs," says he sees seniors getting creative with figuring out how to stay happy while also make ends meet after quitting their jobs.

"When I worked on 'Broken Eggs,' I found so many people living in their RVs in semi-permanent spots," he says. While living out of an RV saved money, Meadows says it wasn't a desperate move for the retirees he met. "It never seemed like [they] were forced out of their homes. It seems like people planned on that life in retirement."

Take Steps Now to Ensure Happiness Later

Although the research is promising, you shouldn't expect retirement to magically improve your life. Taking some small steps while working may help boost happiness and health once you exit the workforce.

Joe Heider, president of Cirrus Wealth Management in Cleveland, advocates for having a plan for retirement, and he doesn't mean a financial plan. "Many people think of retirement as a permanent vacation, but it can lead to boredom," he says.

To prevent long days spent doing nothing, Heider suggests pre-retirees create a plan for what they expect to do on a daily basis. A light daily schedule may be a welcome change at first, but as retirement progresses, staying engaged in a variety of activities can be key to happiness and healthiness.

Staying active is almost important. "You can have a positive cash flow, but if your health is poor, you're going to be unhappy," Moraif says. To that end, Moraif says his firm counsels clients to plan to live to 100 and take care of their bodies and bank accounts accordingly.

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Retirement: Your Ticket to a Happier, Healthier Life - US News