What is nekkhamma but the practice of poverty? Aren’t the uposatha precepts meant to help us reduce our attachment and cultivate a practice that doesn’t feed the kilesas? Staring down the barrel of the greatest global economic crisis since the Great Depression, I’m finding solace in the fact that poverty itself isn’t the burden, rather it’s how we hold it.
Perhaps because the Stoics lived in a society that more closely resembles ours (as they had not gone forth from the household life like the Sangha) and sramanas weren’t really a thing in Roman society (the Greeks had Cynics of course but I don’t recall any such thing in Roman reports), there is a plethora of material dealing with poverty, disrepute and exile. I intend to take up a practice of simplicity in eating and of wants (that is, refusing to satisfy anything but the simplest of desires) during this time to prepare myself for the harder times to come. If not now, when?
Cattāri Brahmavihārā 
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