Śabda No. 8
We use it for any expert.
“It is better even to live on a beggar's fare… than to slay these most venerable teachers.”
The first gurus in the Gītā are the teachers Arjuna will not fight. He would rather beg. Then he asks Kṛṣṇa to be his teacher.
Arjuna asked his. Samvāda answers yours with the Gītā's own verses.
Samvāda is software, an AI companion tuned to the Bhagavad Gītā. It is not a person. It answers from the verse and shows you which one, and it never pretends to be Kṛṣṇa.
गुरूनहत्वा हि महानुभावान्
श्रेयो भोक्तुं भैक्ष्यमपीह लोके।
हत्वार्थकामांस्तु गुरूनिहैव
भुञ्जीय भोगान् रुधिरप्रदिग्धान्।।
gurūnahatvā hi mahānubhāvān śreyo bhoktuṁ bhaikṣyamapīha loke hatvārtha-kāmāṁstu gurūnihaiva bhuñjīya bhogān rudhira-pradigdhān
It is better even to live on a beggar's fare in this world than to slay these most venerable teachers. If I were to slay my teachers, though they may be degraded by desire for wealth, I would only be enjoying blood-stained pleasures here.
2.5 is verse 52 of 700, and verse 5 of 72 in chapter 2.
Guru (teacher; 6.22 uses it for heavy and is not counted), in any form, appears in 3 verses of the 700: 2.5, 11.43 and 17.14.
2.5 falls under the speaker label of Arjuna.
Counted by Vāṇi on the 700-verse text at getvani.app/gita.
The first gurus in the Gītā are the people Arjuna will not fight. 2.4 names Bhīṣma and Droṇa as worthy of reverence and asks how he can aim arrows at them. 2.5 says it would be better to live on a beggar's fare than to kill these most venerable teachers, guru in the Sanskrit, because any pleasure enjoyed afterwards would be stained with their blood. 2.6 adds that he does not know whether winning or losing is better, with the sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra standing against them. In the next verse, 2.7, he turns to Kṛṣṇa and asks to be taught, calling himself a disciple. So the word is used first for the people he owes respect, and then the book becomes a teaching from a new teacher. That is the story's point too. The setting is chapter 2.