Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism

p90: The desire to possess is considered by Buddhism to be one of the worst passions with which mortals are apt to be obsessed.  What, in fact, causes so much misery in the world is the universal impulse of acquisition. [...] Despairing of the utter irrationality of human affairs, Buddhist monks have gone to the other extreme and cut themselves off even from reasonable and perfectly innocent enjoyments of life.  However, the Zen ideal of putting a monk's belongings into a tiny box is his mute protest, though so far ineffective, against the present order of society.