It is an excellent thing to live modestly, shun luxury and wealth and not lust after fame and fortune. Rare has been the wise man who was rich. In China once there was a man by the name of Xu You, who owned nothing and even drank directly from his cupped hands. Seeing this, someone gave him a ‘singing gourd’ to use as a cup; he hung it in a tree, but when he heard it singing in the wind one day he threw it away, annoyed by the noise it made, and went back to drinking his water from his hands. What a free, pure spirit!
Sun Chen had no bedclothes to sleep under in the winter months, only a bundle of straw which he slept in at night and put away again each morning. The Chinese wrote these stories to hand down to later times because they found them so impressive. No one bothers to tell such tales in our country.Kenkō, “Essays in Idleness,” c. 1330 – 1332.