What A Chacham!

There was once a Yid who was an ascetic. He would eat and sleep very little, and subsisted on the bare minimum. Under his long jacket he would wear sackcloth as a sign of simplicity and lowliness. One time he came to the tzadik and felt that the tzadik should know what a high level he has reached. So he opened up his jacket a little to reveal the sackcloth that was his garb. The tzadik muttered "What a chacham, what a chacham!!"

The ascetic couldn't control himself and asked "Who is a chacham?"

"The yetzer hara", replied the tzadik "that he could take a Yid like you and put him in sackcloth..."


What do you learn from this story?