The Buddha took his bowl and entered the great city of Sravasti to beg for food. Members of the sangha beg for food in order to give living beings an opportunity to plant seeds in the field of blessings. Because living beings did not know about going before the Triple Jewel to plant blessings, the sangha members went to the living beings by entering the cities and begging from door to door, neither bypassing the poor to beg from the rich, nor bypassing the rich to beg from the poor, unlike Subhūti who exclusively begged from the wealthy.

The Buddha reprimanded his two disciples Subhūti and Great Kāśyapa for their manner of begging. First he scolded Subhūti for thinking, “Wealthy people have money because in former lives they fostered merit and virtue. If I don’t beg from them and give them the opportunity to plant further blessings, then next life they will be poor. They will not continue to be wealthy and honored.” So Subhūti only begged from the rich. However, wealthy people eat good food. Although he said it was to help them plant blessings so they could continue to be wealthy in future lives, I believe that in actuality Subhūti liked to eat good food and that is why he begged from the rich. That is what I say, but perhaps Subhūti was not like the rest of us, who constantly think about eating well. It is true that he wanted to help them continue their blessings.

Second, the Buddha scolded Great Kāśyapa because, in his arduous practice of asceticism, he not only ate just one meal a day, but he begged only from the poor. His thought was, “These people are poor because in former lives they did not foster merit and virtue. They did not do good deeds when they had money, and so in this life they are poor. I will help them out of their predicament by enabling them to plant blessings before the Triple Jewel so next life they will be wealthy and honored.” The poorer the house, the more he begged there, even to the point that the poor people took the food out of their own bowls in order to have an offering for him. I believe that because Patriarch Kāśyapa cultivated asceticism he wanted to undergo suffering, and did not want to eat good things. He knew how people with money eat, and did not want to eat well himself. There is a Chinese proverb which says:

To be sparing with clothing increases life.
To be sparing with food increases blessings.

Great Kāśyapa was one hundred twenty years old when he took refuge with the Buddha. Life after life he had been frugal, and in this life, because he did not like to eat rich food, he only begged from the poor, just the opposite of Subhūti. Both of those methods are extreme, and not in accord with the Middle Way, and it is for this reason that the Śūraṅgama Sūtra says that the Buddha scolded them and called them Arhats.

The Buddha was equitable in his begging and did not favor rich or poor. His disciple Ananda followed his example and practiced equal compassion. “Ananda already knew that the Tathagata, the World Honored One, had admonished Subhūti and the Great Kāśyapa as Arhats whose minds were not equable.”