"Plunging" or Challenging Yourself in a New Enviornment

On television I recently heard about a technique related to Buddhism called "plunging," where "you go somewhere completely unfamiliar, somewhere that has nothing to do with your usual way of thinking." The context of the quote involves a Zen monk who lived among the homeless for a time. As a student of Zen Buddhism this idea interests me a lot, but I couldn't find any reference to it on the internet or in my books. Is there a better name for it and is this a real concept or was this just made up for the show?