One of my cyber correspondents wrote something like: 'simran is the answer to everything in life'. I could not agree more. But as always there are buts.

In the Indian tradition meditation is usually combined with the lifestyle of a faqir, a sadhu. The 'meditator' resigns from the world and sits for hours and hours, or even for days on end in a secluded corner and meditates, come what may, in hot sunshine or freezing cold. Worse, even if those around them are in big trouble, 'holy men' ('holy women' are rare, which must be a good reflection on womanhood) are in deep samadh and cannot, or will not, come out of their trance to help.

In the European medieval tradition it was often the monks and nuns who were involved in meditation. And some holy orders were dedicated to work, to activity in the community, while other orders gave themselves over to contemplation.

This of course does not apply to Sikhism. We should indeed always remember Her / Him, our Mother / Father. And we should also go out in society, live the life of a householder, work hard, and share our earnings.

But how can you do simran when you are doing a job? No problem if you are on some kind of routine job, but what if you are a doctor, a lawyer, or a postman (the right envelope into the right letterbox, not as easy as it sounds) and your job needs your attention. How can this be combined with saying 'Waheguru Waheguru', and not doing it in a routine, ritualistic manner?

This is where there is a real difference between the Sikh approach and that of many other religions. Sikhs believe that God is not just the Creator and the all Powerful, we believe that God's Naam is present in the whole universe, that Godly essence (=Naam) is a part of all creatures, plants and objects. The Semitic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, also proclaim that God is everywhere, but do not place the strong emphasis on God as a part of the Creation that Sikhism does.

So when we are doing simran, we should come to the insight that wherever you look you see Waheguru. And if we remember Waheguru in this way we also arrive at the second essential Sikh teaching: seva. God does not need anything, God is Saibhang, needs no one, is self created, self enlightened. But God is omnipresent so we serve the Creator by serving the creation, including God's creatures.

So that sums up our task in life as a Sikh, we remember God through contemplation of Gur Mantar and Mool Mantar, reading Gurbani, listening to and doing Gurbani kirtan, but also in our volunteer work and in our paid for jobs, which we also have to do in a spirit of seva. Just like when you do langar seva, you have to realise that you are dishing out God's food to God's creatures, you also serve God's creatures in a government job, in a shop, as a doctor, a bin-man or whatever you do.

If you do your seva and your job in that spirit, you are remembering God's Naam and Guru's kirpa will be with you.

Born Cornelis Heule in 1947 in the Netherlands, Harjinder Singh arrived in Delhi January 9, 1996, in Amritsar about a week later and took amrit on July 14, 1996. During a four year stay in Punjab, Harjinder first did seva in Harmandir Sahib and then spent one and a half years at the Institute of Sikh Studies in Chandigarh.

Since February 2000 Harjinder is in London where he worked with the Sikh Human Rights Group and continues to volunteer for it's affiliate, Gurseva. Active in the United Kingdom's Liberal Democrat party, Harjinder was involved in the party's recent general election campaign.