The Guru sends a student far away, out of sight! Why?

[hope rainbow]

Why do Guru sometimes send students away from them, away out of sight?
And I am specifically referring to students that broke their samaya, lied to their Guru and/or engaged in degenerating activities while serving their Guru or disparaged their Guru or even accused their Guru.
Why would the Guru then wish these students to be separated from Him?
Shouldn't a Guru, on the contrary, keep them very close out of compassion?
I don't understand...

[Tenzin K]

Actually this action of the Guru to send the students away is out of the Guru compassion.
The student actions as mentioned will collect even more negative karma if he/she still around the Guru.
We will gain a lot of merits when we do what our Guru says and follow all the way of our Guru instruction with no but or doubt.
But if within our Guru present we still act negatively this will create even more damages for the students.

Again, it's the Guru compassion and kindness to send away the student from collecting even more negative karma.

[Klein]

I agree with Tenzin K. A Guru's main motivation is to bring the student towards Enlightenment. If the student near the Guru follows his or her Guru's advise, then the student will generate lots of merits that are necessary to gain spiritual attainments. If this student doesn't, then he or she will generate demerits causing the person to spiral down faster.

So it's best for the student not to be so close in proximity to the Guru and his dharma work. However, this doesn't mean that the Guru will stop looking out and caring for the student. It's just that with the student's current mind frame, it's best for the student to be else where and perhaps learn from a different environment.

When the time is right, the Guru will think of ways to help the student spiritually later on in this lifetime or during a future lifetime. The Guru's compassion for his or her student is eternal.

[Galen]

Klein, you struck a chord with your comment. It is true that is will more negative karma for the student if he/she is near to the guru because of his/her actions. Therefore, the guru sends them away. But the guru still looks out for them.

My guru has had students leave him and then later on they come back to contribute. Maybe that's their journey in Dharma as everyone is different. But, the truth is that the guru never gives up on the student even though the student may have given up.

Dharma may not be as easy as everyone thought. Enlightenment is not like a walk in the park. It's an obstacle course. We should not give up so easily and continue to persevere on.

That's what I think.

[Positive Change]

Klein, you struck a chord with your comment. It is true that is will more negative karma for the student if he/she is near to the guru because of his/her actions. Therefore, the guru sends them away. But the guru still looks out for them.

My guru has had students leave him and then later on they come back to contribute. Maybe that's their journey in Dharma as everyone is different. But, the truth is that the guru never gives up on the student even though the student may have given up.

Dharma may not be as easy as everyone thought. Enlightenment is not like a walk in the park. It's an obstacle course. We should not give up so easily and continue to persevere on.

That's what I think.

Indeed Galen,

Our Guru of whom we have taken refuge with has in his infinite compassion, when giving the said refuge, has promised to guide each and every student with every means possible to the best of his ability.

And because of what our Guru represents, we can under close proximity collect, if we follow our Guru's instructions, vast amounts of good merit but also on that token it is extremely bad karma when we do the opposite. Hence at times when the student does not transform and disobeys and worse still think bad about his or her Guru, the lesser of two evils would be to "allow" the student to "leave".

However such students are NEVER left alone as the Guru will constantly find ways to transform the wayward student through many skillful means. I know personally that my own Guru, thinks constantly and cares for all his students equally, especially the wayward ones. And trust me, it is NEVER an easy thing to do for a Guru even though he might manifest wrathful ways to "push" or "chase" the student away. Imagine a parent having to go through that and multiply that with the number of students the Guru, and you will get the extent of a Guru's compassion, care and love!

[Q]

Why do Guru sometimes send students away from them, away out of sight?
And I am specifically referring to students that broke their samaya, lied to their Guru and/or engaged in degenerating activities while serving their Guru or disparaged their Guru or even accused their Guru.
Why would the Guru then wish these students to be separated from Him?
Shouldn't a Guru, on the contrary, keep them very close out of compassion?
I don't understand...

Well... i think there are a few reasons behind it.

When a student don't respect their Guru (which I believe is the cause for them to break their samaya, lie, not work hard enough etc) they are actually harming themselves, especially being close to their guru. Due to this, the Guru limit his contact with such students out of compassion so that he/she do not create more negative karma.

Besides that... i also think that the Guru compassionately keep them away as a wake up call to the student. Sometimes, people are ignorant... not their fault, being in samsara is just so... therefore many times they do certain actions that is Dharmically wrong but don't realize it. When the Guru keeps them away, they will stop and think... Why am I suddenly so distant from my Guru? eventually realize what they have done to displease their Guru and change for the better.

Also, the Guru is just one individual... although he/she is a Buddha, there is only so many close students the Guru can handle in one given time. There's tons of other students that wish to serve the Guru with all their heart... I'm not saying the Guru don't tolerate people that misbehave, not at all... but out of compassion, the Guru would teach students that actually want the Dharma as priority so that eventually these students can pass down the lineage/teachings and benefit more people.

Perhaps there's more reasons to it... but I can only think of these 3 reasons at the moment

[Dolce Vita]

When we are close to our Guru to serve him, it is said that we gain tremendous merit, main reason is because we are making things easy for our Guru to spread Dharma, and to benefit many people. However, when we become an obstacle for our Guru to spread Dharma, to benefit many, we create a lot of negative Karma, because we are causing delays to people who need help.

Therefore, when we are not efficient, we create problems causing our Guru not able to spread Dharma, we will create a lot of negative Karma. In order to protect the students, the Guru will rather send them away so that they don't create negative Karma.

[dondrup]

A Guru will never abandon his sudents who had established a connection with him.  A Guru uses many skilful means to train his students.  Sometimes out of compassion and for the sake of the student's spiritual development, the Guru has to adopt a "drastic" measure of sending the student away from him.  If the student has strong guru devotion, he should trust and rely on his guru's instruction to leave and never have any wrong view or doubt the guru's intention.  The Guru cares only for the wellbeing and spiritual development of his student.

For the student concerned to remain physically close to the Guru creates more negative karma than away from the guru.  Being away allows the student space to reflect on what the student had done wrong.  The student should sincerely regret his actions which appear to be alright to him.   The student should understand that the Guru has a higher wisdom than him and knows precisely what medicine to be prescribed for his consumption at a particular point in time. 

[pgdharma]

Out of compassion, the Guru sends a student to a distant place. But that doesn’t mean the Guru dislikes the student and tries to get rid of the student. In fact, it is a wakeup call for the student to contemplate why he/she is being pushed away.  Having realized the downfall, when the student comes back there will be much improvement and can contribute more to the dharma.

If the student is near the Guru but does not listen to the advice of the Guru, the student will degenerate even though he/she is near the Guru. So it is better to send the student away, in order for the student to contemplate and eventually if were to come back, will have a better and stable mind frame. Even though the student is out of sight, that doesn’t mean that the Guru will stop caring for the student. A Guru will never give up on his students but will find the best method to guide his students on the right path to Enlightenment.

[Aurore]

To serve a guru directly is the fastest way of generating merits, however, it is also the fastest way to degenerate. I have heard cases where the guru keeps a student close to him in the first place because the student has accumulated a lot of negative karmas in the past. Therefore, the guru will try to help the student collect as much merits as possible and purify as much as possible during his/her time of service to the guru. So when that time comes, the student may not be sustain the merits to stay near the guru anymore.

In addition, the guru finds it difficult to help a student who has too many broken vows and commitments as the student will eventually stop to feel remorse, regret, feels cold and no care attitude. When this happens, the guru cannot help the student at that moment anymore cos nothing can penetrate in. Hence it's better to keep the student away until there is another chance in future to help the student.

[Ensapa]

To me, I feel that the Guru is allowing this student to contemplate on his own actions. It could also be that this student will be very harmful to other students if kept near the Guru and the Guru would prefer to minimize the damage rather than allow it to take down the other students with this person. Broken samaya clouds the students' mind and causes them to engage in more and more activities that damages others and they will still see it as benefitting others. If the center has 100 students and this one student creates a lot of schism, distrust, lies, and pit one student against another,  create factions or cliques within the sangha community, or does things to distant students away from the Guru, or does things such as misleading the Guru or misleading the student to cause the students to break their samaya to their Guru, obviously the Guru has to do something about it and minimize the damage. He cannot let 99 people's samaya be broken by the force of one person alone. In this instance, the logical solution would be to send this student away so that the student has some space to think about what is going on, or be placed in a situation where he can collect merit to undo the damage done to others.

There are many levels of broken samaya, the worst is when the student does activities that are harmful but yet sees it as beneficial and is completely unaware that he or she has broken their samaya and whatever the Guru says no longer makes an impact in the students mind, or the student becomes sleepy when listening to the Dharma.

This is how i see it, anyway.