I’ve spent too many years as an editor to let a writer get away with describing someone as “radiant.”
So I’ll have to do it.
Patricia Sun is radiant. “Love without attachment is light,” wrote Norman O. Brown. Maybe that explains her glow.
I wasn’t especially eager to hear her, even after she was described to me as “the female Ram Dass.” Not another spiritual teacher, I groaned, preaching what I find so hard to practice. And from California yet!, turning up my Eastern nose.
But being with Patricia was an intensely moving experience. Despite my admonitions not to be “blown away,” I was. I wouldn’t call her the female Ram Dass — that label is unfair to both of them — but she’s surely one of the most extraordinary teachers in America today. In fact, not long ago she shared a stage in San Francisco with Ram Dass and Jack Schwarz, another heavyweight of the American spiritual movement. During the discussion Ram Dass was asked a question by someone in the audience and, according to one published account, “Strangely enough, this man of so much eloquence only replied, ‘I can’t answer that. I’m too stoned on Patricia!’ ”
