Those seeking to lead a spiritual life, or just wondering how to become more spiritual may become inspired towards serving others, or giving Seva (selfless service). To learn how to serve God one might emulate spiritual people, study with spiritual teachers, or look to different types of religion and different types of yoga. But finding spiritual guidance on the topic of Seva is not always easy. One might be left wondering, “Is service to humanity a higher means to make a donation – or should I simply donate to charity? What are the best charities to donate to, or to serve?” Or one might ask, “How does Seva support my spiritual development? Is there spiritual power and spiritual transformation to be gained through it?” In the book “Right Understanding To Help Others: Benevolence”, Gnani Purush (embodiment of Self knowledge) Dada Bhagwan offers precise understanding about people helping others and the many benefits Seva has upon one’s spiritual growth. Dadashri explains that happiness begins from the moment one begins serving others and that, in offering Seva, one’s life will never lack for material comfort and happiness. Among the myriad of spiritual books available today, “Right Understanding To Help Others: Benevolence” is a unique and invaluable resource.

When a low-income person asks your church for help, what do you do next? God is extraordinarily generous, and our churches should be, too. Because poverty is complex, however, helping low-income people often requires going beyond meeting their material needs to holistically addressing the roots of their poverty. But on a practical level, how do you move forward in walking with someone who approaches your church for financial help? From the authors of When Helping Hurts comes Helping Without Hurting in Church Benevolence, a guidebook for church staff, deacons, or volunteers who work with low-income people. Short and to the point, this tool provides foundational principles for poverty alleviation and then addresses practical matters, like: How to structure and focus your benevolence work How to respond to immediate needs while pursuing long-term solutions How to mobilize your church to walk with low-income people With practical stories, forms, and tools for churches to use, Helping Without Hurting in Church Benevolence is an all-in-one guide for church leaders and laypeople who want to help the poor in ways that lead to lasting change.

Engaged Buddhism is the contemporary movement of nonviolent social and political activism found throughout the Buddhist world. Its ethical theory sees the world in terms of cause and effect, a view that discourages its practitioners from becoming adversaries, blaming or condemning the other. Its leaders make some of the most important contributions in the Buddhist world to thinking about issues in political theory, human rights, nonviolence, and social justice. Being Benevolence provides for the first time a rich overview of the main ideas and arguments of prominent Engaged Buddhist thinkers and activists on a variety of questions: What kind of political system should modern Asian states have? What are the pros and cons of Western "liberalism"? Can Buddhism support the idea of human rights? Can there ever be a nonviolent nation-state? It identifies the roots of Engaged Buddhist social ethics in such traditional Buddhist concepts and practices as interdependence, compassion, and meditation, and shows how these are applied to particular social and political issues. It illuminates the movement’s metaphysical views on the individual and society and goes on to examine how Engaged Buddhists respond to fundamental questions in political theory concerning the proper balance between the individual and society. The second half of the volume focuses on applied social-political issues: human rights, nonviolence, and social justice.

A Violent History of Benevolence traces how normative histories of liberalism, progress, and social work enact and obscure systemic violences. Chris Chapman and A.J. Withers explore how normative social work history is structured in such a way that contemporary social workers can know many details about social work's violences, without ever imagining that they may also be complicit in these violences. Framings of social work history actively create present-day political and ethical irresponsibility, even among those who imagine themselves to be anti-oppressive, liberal, or radical. The authors document many histories usually left out of social work discourse, including communities of Black social workers (who, among other things, never removed children from their homes involuntarily), the role of early social workers in advancing eugenics and mass confinement, and the resonant emergence of colonial education, psychiatry, and the penitentiary in the same decade. Ultimately, A Violent History of Benevolence aims to invite contemporary social workers and others to reflect on the complex nature of contemporary social work, and specifically on the present-day structural violences that social work enacts in the name of benevolence.

Find your way through the mess to embrace the fulfilling life you've always dreamed of. Join New York Times bestselling author John Eldredge as he shares practical, simple, and refreshing tips with you for living fully. How would you say you are doing these days? Are you happy most of the time? Do you feel deeply loved? Are you excited about your future? How often do you feel lighthearted? These questions almost seem unfair. Life is so hard on all of us, rough on our humanity. We live in soul-scorching times. The mad pace of it all, the number of demands on our time and energy, and the overwhelming torrent of information coming at us 24-7 have left us all ragged, wrung-out, and emptied. This isn't the life we want, but how do we get off the roller coaster? In Get Your Life Back, John Eldredge shows you how to move forward into the life you so desperately need. By incorporating a few simple practices—what John calls "graces"—you can begin to recover your soul, disentangle from the tragedies of this broken world, and discover the restorative power of beauty. These simple practices are yours for the taking. You don't need to abandon your life to get it back--in fact, John shares that you can start restoring your life here and now. Get Your Life Back will give you the tools you need to: Learn how to insert the One Minute Pause into your day Begin practicing "benevolent detachment" and truly let it all go Offer kindness toward yourself in the choices you make Drink in the simple beauty available to you every day Take realistic steps to unplug from technology overload God wants to strengthen and renew your soul, and Jesus longs to give you more of himself. The world may be harsh, but God is gentle; he knows what your daily life is like. All we need to do is put ourselves in places that allow us to receive his help. You can live freely and lightly. Let Get Your Life Back show you how. Your soul will thank you for it.

With more than 450,000 copies in print, When Helping Hurts is a paradigm-forming contemporary classic on the subject of poverty alleviation. Poverty is much more than simply a lack of material resources, and it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve it. When Helping Hurts shows how some alleviation efforts, failing to consider the complexities of poverty, have actually (and unintentionally) done more harm than good. But it looks ahead. It encourages us to see the dignity in everyone, to empower the materially poor, and to know that we are all uniquely needy—and that God in the gospel is reconciling all things to himself. Focusing on both North American and Majority World contexts, When Helping Hurts provides proven strategies for effective poverty alleviation, catalyzing the idea that sustainable change comes not from the outside in, but from the inside out.

Everyone experiences drama and unexpected changes in their lives. Weve all exulted and endured. Weve had loves and losses. Weve tasted joys and sorrows and successes and setbacks. But each person reacts differently to these issues. In Our Emotional Footprint author Dr. Saul Levine examines humans reactions to relationships, life changes, and unexpected events. Levine introduces ten unique people who are passengers in a single rail car and details their fascinating life stories. He looks at how the passengers fared at different points in their lives, how they may have been courageous at times and fearful at others, or were both caring and callous at different times. Through the lens of the four Bsbeing, belonging, believing, and benevolenceOur Emotional Footprint examines their lives and our own, how theyve affected others in the course of their lives, and how they may have been resilient in the face of defeat and gracious in times of success. A celebration of so-called ordinary people, Our Emotional Footprint offers a collection of stories that provide a unique glimpse at lifes pathways and complexities and how we deal with our hopes and expectations. Praise for Our Emotional Footprint Irv Yalom, MD: a wonderful and original bookthe stories are wise and compassionate Dean Delis, PhD: a rare treasuredeep compassion and wisdom E. Fuller Torrey, MD: helps us analyze our own life tapestry and the emotional footprint which will be our heritagestrongly recommended

Benevolence is designed to aid a church in establishing and maintaining a compassion ministry.

In Virtue Ethics for the Real World: Improving Character without Idealization, Howard J. Curzer argues that character ideals seduce virtue ethicists into counterintuitive claims, mislead and psychologically harm people seeking to improve their characters, and sometimes become tools for exploitation. Curzer offers a theory of Aristotelian virtue ethics that eschews idealization and that harmonizes with common sense. To explain the many dilemmas of ordinary life, he allows that different virtues sometimes enjoin incompatible actions and even enjoin actions that conflict with duty. Curzer defends the doctrine of the mean, arguing that idealized traits such as unilateral forgiveness, universal civility, unconditional commitments, and unlimited generosity are not virtues. He shows that the reciprocity of virtues doctrine depends upon idealization and rejects it. When undergirding his theory, Curzer wears several hats. He is a eudaimonist when grounding virtue, a constructivist when grounding value, and a perspectivist (a la Nietzsche) when grounding virtuous action. How can people improve without aiming at an ideal? Curzer offers an individualized approach to character improvement modeled on contemporary medicine. First, diagnose each person’s character flaws. Then tailor treatment plans to each flaw. An important tool is a fine-grained table of the components of character, their failure modes, and corresponding therapies. Curzer provides the beginnings of such a table.