Two people do the exact same thing — feed a stray dog. One does it freely, delighting in the act itself, wanting nothing back. The other does it to feel virtuous, to be seen, to bank moral credit for later. From the outside the action is identical: bowl, food, dog. Inside, they're opposite kinds of act. Nondual Śaiva Tantra names the difference: kriyā is spontaneous, free action done for its own sake; karma is volitional, result-motivated action that binds. The fork isn't what you do — it's whether the doing is free overflow or anxious transaction.1
This is why the tradition can say "act fully in the world" and "don't accumulate karma" in the same breath. The instruction isn't to stop acting; it's to act as kriyā.2
Wallis distinguishes two modes of action that look the same and function oppositely.3
The same physical act is kriyā or karma depending entirely on the posture behind it: free overflow vs. grasping transaction.
Why does result-motivated action bind while free action doesn't? Because binding isn't about the action's consequences in the world (both acts feed the dog); it's about the investment of a separate self in an outcome. When you act to get something, you reinforce three things at once: the sense of a deficient self that needs the something, the sense that the something is out there to be acquired, and the sense that your worth depends on the result. Each grasping act deepens those grooves — it's the contraction practicing being contracted. That's karma: not a cosmic ledger so much as the self-reinforcing loop of a grasping self acting to feed itself.
Kriyā breaks the loop by removing the investment. When you act from fullness, with no result needed to complete you, there's no deficient self being reinforced, no "out there" being chased, no scorecard being updated. The action happens, fully and even passionately, but it doesn't build the contracted self, because the self isn't transacting. So the freedom isn't in what you do or even in being detached-and-cool about it — it's in acting from already-fullness rather than from lack. This is the same move as practice as expression of grace (kriyā) rather than earning (karma): you do the thing wholeheartedly because you're already complete, not to become complete.5
Kriyā vs. karma is the action-side of the View and the precise mechanism behind grace-and-effort (effort as kriyā, not karmic earning) and krīḍā (play is kriyā at the cosmic scale — action for its own sake). It explains how desire can be free (sharing/overflow) rather than binding (grasping). To the vault, it offers the cleanest available distinction between engaged action that liberates and engaged action that entangles — applicable far beyond Tantra.
Sit with Wallis's own image, because it's doing precise work.6 A small child sees a hungry dog and feeds it. Watch the quality: total absorption in the act, delight in the dog's eating, no thought of reward, no audit of "what a good person I am," no expectation of anything back. The feeding is its own complete event — overflow meeting need, joy in the doing. That's kriyā in its purest, most ordinary form, and the child models it without trying because the contracted, scorekeeping self hasn't fully formed yet.
Now run the same act through an adult with a grasping posture. The adult feeds the dog and — subtly or not — banks it: notices their own kindness, files it as evidence of being a good person, perhaps hopes someone saw, perhaps expects the universe to reward the gesture. The act is identical; the posture converts it into karma — it fed the doer's self-image, reinforced the scorekeeping self, made the kindness a transaction. The dog got fed either way; the doer either acted from overflow (kriyā, free) or fed their own contraction (karma, binding).
The case makes the doctrine's whole claim visible and testable in your own conduct: you can't tell kriyā from karma by looking at the action, only by feeling the posture — is this overflow, or am I getting something? And it dissolves a common confusion: the goal isn't to act less or to act coldly (the child acts warmly and fully); it's to act from fullness rather than from the scorekeeping lack.
Pick an ordinary good act you're about to do — help someone, do your work, give something. Before and during, feel for the posture underneath. Is there a quiet getting in it — a hope to be seen, a banking of credit, a need for the result to land a certain way, a scorecard being updated? That's the karma-signature: the grasping self transacting. Now see if you can drop the transaction without dropping the act — do the same thing, fully, warmly, but for its own sake, letting it be complete in the doing whether or not anyone notices or anything comes back. You'll feel the difference as a kind of lightness: the act stops being a move in a game you're trying to win and becomes overflow. You won't purify every act; the scorekeeper is persistent. The practice is the repeated noticing — am I overflowing or am I getting? — and the gentle release of the getting, again and again, until more of your action runs as kriyā.
Detachment as coldness. You hear "act without attachment to results" and become disengaged — going through the motions half-heartedly and calling it non-attachment. But kriyā is full, warm, absorbed (the child feeds the dog with delight); it's the grasping that drops, not the engagement. The tell: your "non-attached" action is just lukewarm, and you've confused not-caring with acting-from-fullness.
Spiritualized scorekeeping. You stop banking ordinary credit and start banking spiritual credit — "look how non-attached I'm being," auditing your own kriyā. That's karma wearing kriyā's clothes; the scorekeeper just changed currencies. The tell: a subtle pride in your own selflessness, which is the grasping self congratulating itself on not grasping.
This is insider doctrine, the Tantric reframing of the pan-Indian karma concept.7 Its honest edge is whether the posture is as cleanly separable as the doctrine implies: in real action, free overflow and subtle getting are often braided (you help someone genuinely and enjoy being helpful and hope they're grateful — all at once). Whether "pure kriyā" is achievable or is an asymptote that real, mixed-motive action only approaches is the live question — and whether the attempt to purify motive can itself become a new, subtle karma (grasping at selflessness) is the trap the doctrine has to keep navigating.
Kriyā vs. karma converges almost exactly with the Bhagavad Gītā's karma-yoga — action without attachment to fruits (niṣkāma karma) — and the convergence is worth naming because the two come from different streams (Vaiṣṇava devotional vs. Śaiva nondual) and land on the same structural insight: it's not action that binds but grasping at the fruits of action. The Tantric flavor adds the metaphysical grounding — kriyā is one of the five divine Powers (kriyā-śakti), so free action isn't just an ethical discipline but the natural mode of Consciousness itself expressing its fullness. Where the Gītā tends to frame fruit-detachment as a duty to perform, the Tantra frames it as a return to your own nature (you already are kriyā-śakti; grasping is the unnatural clamp). The convergence confirms the insight is robust across traditions; the split is whether free action is a discipline you impose or a nature you recover.
Kriyā vs. karma is a distinction about motivation — action from overflow vs. action from lack/getting — which maps directly onto psychology's intrinsic/extrinsic divide.
The Sharpest Implication If the same act is liberating or binding depending only on the posture behind it, then your spiritual condition isn't measured by what you do — including all your good deeds — but by whether you're getting something from doing it. That's uncomfortable, because it means a life full of visibly good actions can be entirely karma (a scorekeeping self feeding itself on its own virtue), while an outwardly ordinary life can be mostly kriyā. The destabilizing cut: you can't point to your good behavior as evidence of freedom, because the very act of pointing — banking the credit — is the karma-signature. Freedom isn't in the ledger of your deeds; it's in whether you've stopped keeping the ledger at all.
Generative Questions