self help, spirituality, philosophy plot is a journey of self discovery?

[Linda]

I read this book during a time I was reading Paulo Coelho, Four Agreements and the like. The portion that has come back to haunt me is when the narrator visited a rich man who was feeding a crowd of peasants. He witnessed a beggar come ask for something to eat. The rich man gave the beggar a task to do before feeding him. The narrator asked the rich man why he did that. The rich man explained something about never giving without requiring something as this lifts the recipient's self-image whereas merely giving is destructive to self-image.