The Honest Merchant

When Yudhishthira asked how a man should truly live to be righteous - whether by great penances and renunciation, or in some other way - the sages told him the story of Jajali the ascetic and Tuladhara the merchant, which answers exactly that question, and overturns the way most people would answer it.

There was once a brahmin named Jajali, who gave himself to penance of the most extreme severity. He went deep into the wilderness, lived on roots and air, wore rags and then bark and then nothing, and subjected his body to every austerity, until he had become a great ascetic, gaunt and matted, famed for the harshness of his discipline. He stood for immense periods in meditation, utterly still, mastering his body until it scarcely seemed to live at all.