For many people in modern industrial societies, clothing is now relatively cheap. A pair of jeans or a new top often costs less than a meal and can be far cheaper than a full tank of fuel. But clothing comes with a hidden cost. The fashion industry uses more energy than the aviation and shipping industries combined and now accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions. About 60% of the material in the clothes you wear is made of plastic, and the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles enter the world’s oceans in the form of plastic microfibres released by washing clothes.
Fashion is wasteful too. Each year the fashion industry uses enough water to meet the needs of about 5 million people with about 20% of the world’s industrial wastewater coming from the fashion industry. Of course, part of this wastefulness stems from the demand of the consumer culture clothing is produced to meet. In 2014 people were purchasing 60% more clothes than they did in 2000, but only keep them for about half as long, with the equivalent of a full rubbish truck of clothing being dumped or burnt EACH SECOND!
The environmental impact of the fashion industry is now well documented. But people continue to chase the latest trends, desperate to be anything but out of fashion. This is conformity masquerading as self-expression.
And yet Tantra – a spiritual philosophy that evolved in medieval India over 1500 years ago – recognised the folly of such attachments. A key feature of the Tantric journey is to identify and break free from social constructs. These aren’t merely the stories we tell about ourselves, to enhance our social status or sense of self-worth, but are also the stories we are told about ourselves. The versions of ourselves that we feel compelled to conform with, the expectations we feel obliged to meet. And what re-enforces these constructed versions of ourselves more than the clothes we wear; the impressions we try to present; the brand images we hope to co-opt?
And this is why there is a tradition of nudity among Tantric practitioners. Within Tantra, we are all recognised as individual expressions of the same singular divinity. We are all God in miniature. But we are not all the same; nor are we supposed to be. We are a game of self-exploration; multiple expressions of the same playful imagination. But the magnitude of this truth can be frightening. It can be easier to cower behind our egotistical individuality, our exalted uniqueness. Ultimately, we are in a constant battle with ourselves – our true self (as a condensed version of our ultimate, universal, divine self) versus our constructed, egotistical, desperate to be superior self.
So, the clothes we wear not only cause untold damage to the environment, but they also re-enforce a socially constructed version of ourselves that prevents us from exploring our spiritual potential. A more pragmatic approach might simply be to consider the clothes we wear and why we wear them. Choose sustainable clothing and only wear what you need to stay dry and warm. Wear as little as possible as often as possible. Or, in other words, save the planet, wear less. From an Eco-Tantric perspective though, we might want to embrace the bolder slogan: Go green, go naked!
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