There is a lovely story about a great western saint, Francis of Assisi. On a snowy, freezing-cold winter night he was walking down the road in the snow with his companion, Brother Leo. St. Francis called through the storm, “Brother Leo, do you know what perfect joy is?”
He said, “No, Francis, tell me.” St. Francis replied, “When we arrive at the monastery tonight, if they were to shut the door in our faces, that’s perfect joy. And if they were to open the door again, grab hold of us, and throw us into a snowdrift, that is perfect joy. And if they were to tell us never to come back and send us out into the cold, that’s perfect joy. We must have joy inside, for if we don’t, we won’t find it even if they were to welcome us, feed us well, and make us feel loved.”
Joy is something that you can carry in yourself no matter where you are, because joy doesn’t come from anywhere except your own Self. You are the center of the universe. You are the center of everything that is. Nothing that you can ever understand will be yours except to the extent that you have understood it from within. You have to start by going within and finding out more and more deeply who and what you really are.