What role does religion play at the end of life in Japan? Spiritual Ends draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to provide an intimate portrayal of how spiritual care is provided to the dying in Japan. Timothy O. Benedict shows how hospice caregivers in Japan are appropriating and reinterpreting global ideas about spirituality and the practice of spiritual care. Benedict relates these findings to a longer story of how Japanese religious groups have pursued vocational roles in medical institutions as a means to demonstrate a so-called "healthy" role in society. Focusing on how care for the kokoro (heart or mind) is key to the practice of spiritual care, this book enriches conventional understandings of religious identity in Japan while offering a valuable East Asian perspective to global conversations on the ways religion, spirituality, and medicine intersect at death. "Timothy Benedict has produced a work brimming with wisdom drawn from his work as a chaplain as well as a broad understanding of the place of religion in the lives of contemporary Japanese people." - HELEN HARDACRE, Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Harvard University "Benedict offers a highly original perspective and new insightful material, providing a critical approach to the debate about spiritual care and spirituality." - ERICA BAFFELLI, Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Manchester "Spiritual Ends reveals an unassuming approach to spiritual care that privileges human connections at life's end." - JACQUELINE STONE, author of Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan "A discerning study of pain and comfort at the end of life, and a story of the invention of spirituality in Japan, which traffics between medical, psychological, and religious thought." - AMY B. BOROVOY, Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University.

This book examines the services that chaplains provide to dying patients and the unique relationship that palliative care staff construct with people at the end of life. It explores the nature of hope when faced with the inevitable and develops a theory of spiritual care rooted in relationship that has implications for all healthcare professionals.

"Abide in me," Jesus tells us, "and you will bear much fruit." Yet too often we forget that fruit needs different seasons in order to grow. We measure our spiritual maturity by how much we do rather than how we are responding to our current spiritual season. In Spiritual Rhythm, Mark Buchanan replaces our spirituality of busyness with a spirituality of abiding. Sometimes we are busy, sometimes still, sometimes pushing with all we've got, sometimes waiting. This model of the spiritual life measures and produces growth by asking: Are we living in rhythm with the season we are in? With the lyrical writing for which he is known, Mark invites us to respond to every season of the heart, whether we are flourishing and fruitful, stark and dismal, or cool and windy. In comparing spiritual rhythms to the seasons of the year, he shows us what to expect from each season and how embracing the seasons causes our spiritual lives to prosper. As he draws on the powerful words of Scripture, Mark explores what activities are suitable or necessary in each season--and what activities are useless or even harmful in that season. Throughout the book, Mark weaves together stories of young and old, men and women, families, couples, and individuals who are in or have been through a particular season of the heart. As Mark writes, "I pray that this book meets you in whatever season you're in, and prepares you for whatever seasons await. I pray that it helps you find your voice, your stride, your rhythm, in season or out. Mostly, I pray that you, with or without my help, find Christ wherever you are. And that, even more, you discover that wherever you are, he's found you."

Eli Monpress is clever, he's determined, and he's in way over his head. First rule of thievery: don't be a hero. When Eli broke the rules and saved the Council Kingdoms, he thought he knew the price, but resuming his place as the Shepherdess's favorite isn't as simple as bowing his head. Now that she has her darling back, Benehime is setting in motion a plan that could destroy everything she was created to protect, and even Eli's charm might not be enough to stop her. But Eli Monpress always has a plan, and with disaster rapidly approaching, he's pulling in every favor he can think of to make it work, including the grudging help of the Spirit Court's new Rector, Miranda Lyonette. But with the world in panic, the demon stirring, and the Lord of Storms back on the hunt, it's going to take more than luck and charm to pull Eli through this time. He's going to have to break a few more rules and work with some old enemies if he's going to survive.

Finding Dignity at the End of Life discusses the need for palliative care as a human right and explores a whole-person methodology for use in treatment. The book examines the concept of palliative care as a holistic human right from the perspective of multiple aspects of faith, ideology, culture, and nationality. Integrating a humanities-based approach, chapters provide detailed discussions of spirituality, suffering, and healing from scholars from around the world. Within each chapter, the authors address a different cultural and religious focus by examining how this topic relates to questions of inherent dignity, both ethically and theologically, and how different spiritual lenses may inform our interpretation of medical outcomes. Mental health practitioners, allied professionals, and theologians will find this a useful and reflective guide to palliative care and its connection to faith, spirituality, and culture.

In this remarkable book, Salvadore Poe guides you step by step to awakening. There are numerous books that talk about spiritual awakening and enlightenment. And while reading any of them, you may be inspired, and you may be impressed with the wisdom of the author, but you don't awaken. You just add more concepts and beliefs to your mind about what enlightenment is, and this keeps you seeking for answers and resolution. Liberation IS, The End of the Spiritual Path is different. It is intended as a final push for those who are ready to be finished seeking. Through inquiries and experiments, you are guided to recognize your free essential being, and what is revealed in that recognition is that you are whole and complete, lacking nothing, exactly as you are now. When this is clearly seen and becomes doubtless, seeking ends naturally, by itself.

18 essays on the subject. With contributions by Mallerme, Stephen Lansing, David Guss, Karl Young, Dennis Tedlock, Becky Cohen, Jed Rasula, Alison Knowles, George Quasha, Tina Oldknow, Dick Higgins, Edmond Jabes, Paul Eluard, Gershom Scholem, and Herbert Blau.