Stories of Transformation through Contemplative Practice:
Shugen Arnold Sensei

Another story that comes to mind is from a fellow I was talking to who's this big guy - most of these guys are pretty big - who has been in prison a long time and is just a very model prisoner. He doesn't get into trouble, he's very well respected by the other inmates, by the staff, very talented in many ways - just, you know, he's on a track to getting out, which he is very, very committed to.

He told me the story that was about a situation where he worked with another person very closely, a supervisor, and he said this other guy was just getting under his skin. It had been going on and going on, and it was building up more and more until there was quite a bit of animosity between them, but they had to work together. Then, he said, one day the supervisor did something and the dam broke. He just lost everything and he consciously decided, although it took only fractions of a second, to throw everything away and to just teach this guy a lesson. And he said, he was lunging across the room to him and he was going to take him down. He was going across the room, and as he was going across the room, he recognized what he was doing.

Its is very interesting, you know? I've actually read studies about violent action, criminal behavior where there is this recognition. In other words, we are making decisions all along the way. They can happen so fast that sometimes we may excuse ourselves into thinking that it wasn't a conscious decision, but actually it is. And he said, at the last second before he actually made contact with the guy, it's like something woke up in him, and he realized what was happening, the foolishness of it, and the craziness that if he did that, an hour later, six hours later, tomorrow morning -- he was going to wake up and think, "what in God's name did I do?"

And so he's flying across the room, and the supervisor, meanwhile, is running over to hit the panic button, which means, you know, they are going to be descended upon by guards and batons and the whole nine yards, and I asked, "well, what did you do?" And he said, "I hugged him."

And I said, "what did the other guy do?" He said, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know whether to run. He scared the crap out of him. He said, it scared him more than if I had hit him. And so after a second of this hugging, he leaves the room to chill out and just kind of get grounded again but to me, again, it was just a perfect example of how all those years of practice how in any moment it can change or you can lose it.