Kam and the Discipline of Naam Simran

Sikh Rahit Maryada, the code of conduct maintained by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, does not treat kam as forbidden in the sense of condemning marriage or family life, a life Sikh teaching explicitly commends over renunciation, but as a force requiring the same constant discipline the tradition applies to the other four thieves, principally through naam simran, remembrance of the divine Name, understood as the practice that keeps the mind anchored against the pull of unchecked desire rather than a technique for eliminating desire altogether.

W.H. McLeod's account of Sikh belief and practice situates this alongside the tradition's broader rejection of asceticism as the primary spiritual path, in contrast to renunciate traditions that answer kam through celibacy or withdrawal, Sikh teaching instead locating the struggle within ordinary householder life, grihastha, lived alongside a spouse and community rather than apart from it. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism frames kam's place among the five thieves as inseparable from the broader teaching on maya, worldly illusion, since desire is read there as one of the primary mechanisms by which maya binds a person to the material world and away from union with Waheguru, the tradition's name for God.