Naam Simran is the central devotional discipline of Sikhism: the loving remembrance and repetition of the divine Name, Naam, held to be the means by which the mind is stilled, the ego dissolved and the human being united with the one God. In Sikh teaching the Naam is not merely a word but the reality and presence of God as immanent in creation, and to dwell on it, whether by the repetition of Waheguru, by the recitation of scripture, or by the singing of the Gurus' hymns, is to attune the whole person to that presence. The Guru Granth Sahib returns again and again to the Name as the one thing needful, the treasure beside which all else is loss.
Simran may be practised aloud, murmured, or held silently in the heart, and it may be a set daily discipline or a continuous undercurrent kept through all activity. The ideal the tradition holds out is ajapa jaap, a remembrance so established that it continues of itself with every breath, so that the devotee lives in unbroken awareness of God while fully engaged in the world.