Authentic in Nature

As part of the Hay House Book Nook program I will be blogging regular reviews of their books in addition to books I pick up on my own. I received this book for free from Hay House for review. The opinions expressed are my own and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

One Day the Shadow Passed by Jonathan Reggio is a story about a man’s life-transforming encounter with a rural farmer during a pilgrimage to Japan. After feeling aimless in his life, James embarks on this adventure to try and find meaning and direction. During his trek, he wanders from the trail and is lost, only to discover a farmer named Takeshi Fumimoto, who happens to speak English. He takes James in and shares his life story, including his Tao-based “do nothing” farming techniques and simple, back-to-the-land way of life.

The farmer is a dreamer who is convinced his way of farming is superior to the modern methods. James is “overcome with awe for this simple farmer who trusted only that if he followed his heart, nature would reward his faith.”

After revisiting Fumimoto-san’s life adventures, the great quest of the book is for the pilgrim to find out if the farmer’s radical ideas actually work. This is basically a book about holding steadfast to your dream and making it through tough times to realize success. Here are a couple of wise quotes I found:

“Some people say that when you lose your way you do so for a reason. Your deeper mind, which is better attuned to the truth of the world than your conscious mind, has decided that your life is heading in the wrong direction and that something must finally be done. Unconstrained by time and space, your deeper mind works out a new plan that will take you back to the source of all truth…”

“In life you can either choose to follow your heart or not. There is no middle way. You cannot follow your heart a little bit, just in the evenings, or only at the weekends.”

The pilgrim’s reflections mirror much of humanity’s current disconnect from our planet as well as the complicated relationship we have with technology and progress. This book takes a simplistic, and at times over-the-top, stance against technology with statements such as “The efforts of science were all unnecessary and only led to spiritual and physical hunger and pain.”

This kind of black and white thinking also colors the belief that the farmer’s “do nothing” style of farming is perfectly natural. It may not involve pesticides or herbicides but clearing the land to plant monocultures of crops (the apple orchard is referred to as having two thousand trees, so this is not exactly a backyard plot) is hardly natural. I was glad to see the farmer make a concession to this towards the end of the book:

” ‘The only real natural farmer is the hunter and gatherer…But we can’t go back to that life. It is too late. There are too many people in the world and too many people who know nothing of nature…’ “

I would argue this quote also applies to the farmer’s belief that everyone should go back to farming, as not all people want to be farming their own plot of land in order to survive. At times, the author works a little too much trying to convince the reader how misguided modern agricultural practices are rather than focusing on the characters.

I wish the author had developed this book more to flesh out the story of the farmer, the pilgrim and their lives. I wanted to know more about these people, but they seemed to come and go all too fast.

If you’re looking for a short, easy read to transport you to a different time and place, One Day the Shadow Passed is a good book to pick up for a quick escape from modern life.