The speaker talked about a Russian saint who used to be a warlord, but repented and became a monk in order to atone for his past. One day, robbers set upon him, and he gave them everything--all his money, all the gold in the chapel. But they were convinced he was hiding treasure from them (he was, of course; the treasure of his soul, which wasn't even his to give away) and beat him in fury. They broke his back and he was forever half-crippled, but still cut wood for the nuns every day.
Taking it as spiritual metaphor, you can respond to that story a number of ways.
1) "Instant karma's gonna get you." The beating was justice catching up with him.
2) It is possible to take a good idea too far.
3) Isn't it violent to allow people to commit violence?
The choice to be violent--to cross the line and threaten, or do, harm to beings or property--may be a free choice, but it is not a legitimate one. A person technically has the freedom to get a bunch of friends and go rob a monk, but they do not have the right. If they get caught, they're going to be punished, and they should. Even if not, every tradition in the world teaches that such men are in grave spiritual danger if they don't repent. If someone could stop them from acting out their greed and viciousness, they've done the perpetrators almost as much of a favor as they've done the intended victim.
So arguably, the accommodating Russian monk was spiritually just as ruthless to the robbers as he used to be to his enemies on the battlefield. He killed them, all right--just in a different way. And his willingness to sacrifice his body in order to do so is not so far from being a soldier as one might think.
An interesting, unsettling tale...with a lot of layers underneath.
