Extract from one of Hôgen's talk.

Q: Can you describe this here-now encounter? What it is to be in the here-now encounter? Is there any word you can use to describe it?

Hôgen: Ah yes, shall I give it to you?

Q: Yes please.

...(Hôgen strikes the gong...) - This is it!
This one encounter is just one encounter in eternity. You cannot repeat it. Each moment is like this. With all our concepts, even with one thousand words, we cannot describe THIS. But one encounter, one real encounter, can do it. Can you find anything that is not a real miracle?
We ceaselessly neglect and ignore this because of our fixed idea of progress. So don't have such a fixed measure or scale. Why do you need to or want to be better? 'Better' and 'Progress' imply a certain direction. To get 'better', we need to go toward one direction only. To where? To HERE-NOW. Einstein told us "this starting point is the ultimate final goal". So where do you need to go? Do you need to have somewhere to go? If you still have a direction it is nothing but escapism. Therefore you get pain. But if you are at home, and you don't need to go anywhere else, you can sit without pain. At such a moment even physical pain suddenly disappears.
Now are you freed from your prison, your 'measure'? Do you still 'want' to go back home? When you are already at home, you don't need to go back home.
When I was 25 years old, I practised sitting meditation in the graveyard, during a whole week all night long in the cold winter. I practised "MU"... Of course there was a lot of physical pain. But suddenly my whole body was completely released from physical pain and I felt completely at home. I saw that I don't need to go or escape anywhere, because THIS (Now) is the final realisation and final home, the starting and arrival point. I found just THIS (Now), JUST THIS, original realisation, original realisation of cosmos itself, Life itself, without the need to add any extra tail or leg to the snake.
What we need is such an awakening. Therefore, please don't wish to become 'better'. Don't 'progress'.
Just be at home
Just be aware of THIS.
Just this awareness, only.
Hôgen