Like I said, in practice it varies a lot through different cultures and time. There is also usually a distinction between what regular everyday Buddhists should do and what monks/Boddhisattva (those trying to achieve Buddhahood) do, maybe with the understanding that eventually all souls will live the life of a monk and achieve enlightenment.

And not to be pedantic, but do you mean "asceticism"? Aestheticism is like devotion to art or something like that. Asceticism is self imposed austerity and anti-hedonism.