I started reading M. D. Usher's How to Say No: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Cynicism a few months ago after watching a documentary on the great Greek cynic Diogenes (c.412-323 BC), who famously lived in conditions no better, or worse, than a dog. Shortly after finishing the book, I was informed that my job was going to end soon. So to cut costs, I started looking around for a small apartment in Peru's Sacred Valley and luckily found the perfect place in the ancient Inca town of Ollantaytambo. My lifestyle will not be as extreme as that of Diogenes by any means, but my new home will be the smallest I’ve ever lived in. What I learned from the cynics about simple living should come in handy.

Excerpts:  

Diogenes’s indecent behavior and rough, out-of-doors living earned him a nickname: the Dog, which is what the Greek word kuōn, whence the adjective kunikos (“Cynic”), means. Anyone who has visited modern Athens will have seen or experienced the city’s motley assortment of ownerless dogs roaming the streets and alleyways, pawing through garbage bins, and lounging in the Mediterranean sun (or porticoed shade) amidst the dilapidated remains of high civilization. That is exactly how we are to picture the ancient Athenians picturing Diogenes.

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Alexander once stood before [Diogenes] and declared, “I am Alexander, the Great King.” “And I,” Diogenes replied, “am Diogenes the Dog.”

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While Diogenes was sunbathing in the Craneum, Alexander stood in front of him and said, “Ask me for whatever you want,” to which Diogenes replied, “Get out of my sunshine.”

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It was Diogenes' custom to light a lamp in the middle of the day, walk around with it and say, “I’m looking for a human being.”

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All human woes spring from desire for it—civic conflicts, wars, conspiracies, and slaughter. All these things have their source in the desire for more. May that desire be far from us. May I never overreach to grab more. Indeed, may I be able to cope with having less.

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But let us return to my earlier point that anyone embarking on the Cynic life ought to censure himself severely, to cross-examine and not to engage in self-aggrandizement, but to ask himself the following questions in no uncertain terms: Do I enjoy expensive food? Must I have a soft bed? Do I pander to honor and reputation? Do I crave attention and, even though it be vacuous, count it as honorific nonetheless? Let anyone interested in Cynicism not give in to the complacency of the mob, nor sample luxury with even the tip of his finger, as they say, until he has trampled it entirely underfoot.

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I don’t complain about the gods’ doings with “woe is me.” You, however, for all your happiness, are satisfied with nothing that transpires, find fault with everything, are unwilling to accept what you have and yearn for what you don’t, praying for summer in winter and winter in summer, for cold weather in hot and for hot weather in cold. You’re like hard-to-please invalids, always complaining about your lot. Yet disease is the cause of their complaining. Yours is your way of life.

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Your predicament is similar to what people say happens to someone mounted on a horse gone berserk: The horse bolts and carries the rider with it, and he is no longer able to dismount a horse at full gallop. Someone meets up with him and asks where he’s heading to and he replies, pointing to the horse, “Wherever this one decides.”

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The end and outlook of Cynic philosophy, as in fact of all philosophy, is to be happy. But Cynics seek a happiness that arises from living according to Nature, with no deference to the opinions of the multitude.

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That was what his brand of philosophy was like—meek, civilized, cheerful.

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Demonax, 70-170 AD
You never saw him shouting or agitated or angry, even if he had to upbraid someone, for while he attacked their sins, he forgave the sinners. In this he was of the mind to model himself on the doctors who treat sicknesses but feel no anger toward their patients. He believed that to err is human, but that it was a god’s job, or godly man’s, to straighten out what has gone awry.

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Demonax
And so, abstaining from all food, Demonax quit this life, looking cheerful and just like he always did to people who met him. When a short while before his death someone asked him, “What are your instructions for the funeral?” he replied, “Don’t trouble yourselves. The stench will bury me!” “But isn’t it disrespectful,” the man countered, “for the body of a man like you to be laid out as food for birds and dogs?” “I see nothing strange in that,” he replied, “if even in death I can be useful to the living.”

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You never saw him shouting or agitated or angry, even if he had to upbraid someone, for while he attacked their sins, he forgave the sinners. In this he was of the mind to model himself on the doctors who treat sicknesses but feel no anger toward their patients. He believed that to err is human, but that it was a god’s job, or godly man’s, to straighten out what has gone awry.

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When Diogenes was able to approach, he asked what the ruckus for this guy was all about and what had happened. “We have won!” the man said, “The men’s two-hundred-yard dash!” “And what kind of achievement is that?” Diogenes replied. “For you have not become even a tad more intelligent for having beat your fellow runners, nor more moderate now than before, nor less cowardly or less dissatisfied. And you will not need fewer things in the future and will not live freer from pain.” “Maybe so,” he replied, “but I am the fastest man among all the other Greeks.” “But not faster than rabbits,” Diogenes retorted, “nor than deer. And yet these creatures, the fastest of all, are also the flightiest. They are afraid of people, dogs, and eagles, and live miserably. Do you not see,” he added, “that speed is an index of cowardice? For it is the nature of things among animals that the fastest are also the most slavish. Heracles, on the same principle, because he was slower than many and unable to catch bad guys on foot used to carry a bow and plied that against those who ran from him.”

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“Are you not ashamed,” Diogenes continued, “to puff yourself up over an activity at which you are naturally worse than the lowliest animals? I doubt you could even beat a fox.

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For the most part, the judges of the Isthmian Games and whoever else was esteemed and powerful were at a total loss about what to do. They withdrew to themselves whenever Diogenes was around or walked by in silence, giving him menacing looks. But when Diogenes went so far as to place the victory crown of pine boughs on his own head, the Corinthian delegation sent some of its support staff to insist he take it off and do nothing unlawful. He, however, asked them why it was unlawful for him to wear the pine-bough crown but not unlawful for others. In response one of them said, “Because, Diogenes, you have not won a victory.” “In fact,” he said in reply, “I have defeated many great competitors, not like these slaves wrestling here now, tossing the discus and running races, but adversaries far more formidable in every way—poverty and exile and disrepute; and more formidable still—anger and pain and desire and fear; and, the most difficult monster of all to handle—soft to the touch and festering inside—pleasure—which no Greek or barbarian can claim to have bested by strength of soul. Rather, all have been worsted and succumbed in that contest—Persians, Medes, Syrians, Macedonians, Athenians, Spartans—all, except me.

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Let him make fun of people who hide under cover of darkness what are necessary, natural functions. What I mean is the secretion of what is superfluous. And yet those same people busy themselves in the middle of our marketplaces and cities with the most outrageous behavior, inappropriate to our nature: stealing money, sycophantic conniving, unjust lawsuits, and the pursuit of other rubbish of this sort. Whereas, when Diogenes farted or shat or did anything else like that in the marketplace, as they say he did, his actions were aimed at trampling on the pretense of those people, to teach them that they were engaged in business much more sordid and problematic than his. For those activities are natural to us all, whereas their activities, to put it plainly, are natural to no one.