“If You See the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him” — A Norse Pagan Reflection on the Ego of Religious Authority
Among Zen Buddhists, there is a well-known and often misunderstood saying: “If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.” It is not a call to violence, but a deeply symbolic spiritual teaching—a challenge against attachment to external symbols, titles, and authorities that block one’s inner path to truth. This same insight echoes through all religions, including Norse Paganism.
At its heart, the Zen saying warns that if you think you’ve found the final, unquestionable embodiment of truth outside yourself—whether in a person, doctrine, tradition, or figure—you have actually strayed from the path. In Norse Pagan terms, this is like believing that one particular gothi (priest), rune master, or book holds all the answers from the gods and must never be questioned. But the gods of the North are not shackled to mortal forms or rigid dogmas. Odin does not demand blind obedience—he hung himself on Yggdrasil not to establish hierarchy, but to gain wisdom through suffering and inner vision.
In fact, the gods themselves in Norse lore are seekers. Odin seeks runes. Thor seeks justice. Freyja seeks love, beauty, and secret powers. They do not sit on a throne telling mortals exactly what to believe—they invite us to seek, risk, question, and grow. When we put a person, title, or tradition on a pedestal and say, “This is the only truth,” we stop listening to the gods and spirits speaking within and around us. That is the “Buddha on the road”—the misleading projection of enlightenment that we are told to kill.
To “kill the Buddha on the road” in Norse Pagan terms means to slay the illusion that your gods, your truth, or your spiritual power can be handed to you by someone else. It means casting down the false idea that divine truth comes from memorizing lore, quoting old sources, or following an unbending reconstructionist path. It’s not the lore that is wrong—many of our ancestors’ texts and poems hold deep wisdom—but the moment we treat them as fixed vessels of truth instead of living mystery, we betray the gods.
And this is true of all religions. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Wicca—all contain beauty and profound teachings. But when any of them tell followers to obey without reflection, to follow a leader without question, to doubt their own inner knowing, they are placing a “Buddha on the road.” They replace the living divine with a rigid proxy of authority.
The true gods, spirits, and ancestors do not demand obedience to dogma—they invite relationship. They whisper through dreams, omens, intuition, synchronicity, and inner stirrings of the soul. They do not ask you to believe—they ask you to experience. To be changed.
So when a guru, priest, gothi, or spiritual influencer claims to have all the answers—when they tell you your experiences are invalid, or that questioning them is heresy—see them for what they are: a Buddha on the road. Bow, if you must—but then walk past. Or better yet, slay the illusion they represent.
For the gods are not found in rules. They are found in mystery. And mystery cannot be handed down—it must be lived.Thus, in Norse Paganism and in all sacred paths, the deepest truth is this: You are the road. You are the seeker. The gods walk beside you, not above you. Trust in that—and let no false Buddha block your way.
The Forked Path of Faith: Spirituality vs. Authority in Norse Pagan Practice
In Norse Paganism—as in any living spiritual tradition—there are two distinct ways people walk the path of belief. These two roads are not just different; they often stand in direct opposition. One path is spiritual, rooted in intuition, lived experience, and inner knowing. The other is authoritative, rooted in obedience to external figures and institutions who claim to speak for the divine.
The spiritual path honors the deep truth that each soul holds within it a sacred spark of the divine—a whisper of the gods, a knowing pulse of nature, a breath of the ancestors. It teaches that real connection to the divine cannot be dictated from a pulpit, a book, or a social hierarchy. Rather, it must be experienced directly, in the still moments of nature, in ritual, in dreams, in signs and omens, and most of all—in the trust one learns to place in their own inner wisdom.
In contrast, the authoritative path demands surrender not to the gods, but to human intermediaries—those who set themselves up as religious “experts” or “leaders.” It tells the seeker to distrust their own experiences, their own insights, their own callings. It replaces the living, breathing relationship with the gods and spirits with rules, structures, dogmas, and power dynamics. This path cuts the soul off from true divine communion and replaces it with hollow ritualism and borrowed belief.
True Norse Paganism is a spirituality of direct connection. It is not a religion meant to be mediated by rigid hierarchies. The gods of the North—Odin, Freyja, Thor, Frigg, the land-wights, the alfar and the disir, the honored ancestors—speak through wind and fire, through runes and dreams, through intuition and sudden knowing. They do not require a priestly class to speak for them. In fact, they often challenge such authority, favoring the lone wanderer, the seeress in the forest, the dreamer by the hearth, and the mystic who questions all.
When one truly walks the spiritual path, they come into communion with these beings. They begin to sense the will of the gods, not as a command, but as a harmonic resonance—a deep alignment that brings clarity, peace, and empowerment. They learn to distinguish divine guidance from delusion. The divine will never encourage hatred, cruelty, or fear-based control. Any voice—be it inner or outer—that urges destruction, separation, or harm is not a god, but a shadow. Such voices stem not from spiritual beings, but from unresolved guilt, fear, or trauma masquerading as truth.
The true divine calls us toward greater life, deeper wisdom, more compassionate strength, and more harmonious living. It may challenge us—but always to grow, not to dominate. It may ask us to face our fears—but only to become more whole.
In the Norse way, we remember that the gods are kin—not kings. They are not here to be obeyed blindly, but to be honored, conversed with, and learned from in a mutual relationship of respect. And most of all, they urge us to remember our own sacredness. To walk with courage. To trust the signs. To listen inward.
This is the soul of true religion: not control, but connection. Not hierarchy, but harmony. Not fear, but faith in the divine spark that dwells within and all around us.
Hail the gods. Hail the spirits. Hail the ancestors. And hail the sacred voice within you.
The Asatru Lore-Thumper: A Monotheist in Pagan Disguise
The Asatru lore-thumper is a person who approaches Norse Paganism with the rigid, dogmatic mindset of a fundamentalist, treating the Eddas and sagas as if they were divine commandments rather than cultural stories, poetic traditions, and mythic expressions of an ever-evolving, living faith. They believe their strict, literal interpretation of the lore is the only valid way to practice Norse Paganism, and they harshly judge and condemn others who engage in personal gnosis, spiritual experience, or practices not explicitly detailed in medieval texts. In doing so, they create an artificial, pseudo-monotheistic version of Asatru that is fundamentally at odds with the polytheistic, animistic, and experiential nature of historical Norse spirituality.
The False Pagan: The Monotheistic Mindset in a Polytheistic Disguise
At their core, the Asatru lore-thumper has not actually left monotheism—they have merely replaced Yahweh with Odin, the Bible with the Poetic Edda, and Christian theology with a set of rigid, textual dogmas about the gods. The lore-thumper seeks absolute certainty in a faith that was never meant to be a rigid belief system. This is the hallmark of monotheism, which traditionally demands a singular, unchanging truth dictated by holy texts.
In contrast, polytheistic faiths are built on multiple perspectives, personal relationships with the divine, and an understanding that myths are living, evolving stories rather than fixed doctrines. The lore-thumper, however, behaves in the same way as a Christian fundamentalist, demanding that everyone conform to their strict, “one-true-way” understanding of the gods. This authoritarian approach is inherently monotheistic—not in the sense of worshiping only one god, but in treating one rigid interpretation as the only possible truth.
Monotheism, as a mindset, centralizes authority—one God, one Book, one Truth. The polytheist decentralizes authority, allowing for multiple perspectives, differing spiritual paths, and personal relationships with the gods. The lore-thumper does not tolerate diversity of belief, showing that their true allegiance is to the mindset of monotheism rather than to the gods themselves.
The Spiritual Deadness of the Lore-Thumper
The irony of the lore-thumper is that, in their desperate attempts to “do it right” according to their rigid interpretations, they sever themselves from actual spirituality. Because they place their faith in cold, academic interpretations rather than lived experience, they remain disconnected from the gods in any meaningful way. This is why so many of them fail to experience real connection, real magic, real signs from the gods—they are too busy gatekeeping and policing others.
A true Pagan engages in:
- Direct relationships with the gods
- Personal experiences, omens, and spiritual insight
- Living, evolving practice based on cultural spirit, not just textual remnants
- Rituals that reflect the needs of the present, rather than mimicry of the past
The lore-thumper rejects all of this in favor of textual fundamentalism, ironically mirroring the worst aspects of the Christian church they claim to have left behind.
Lore-Thumping: A Sign of the Christian Mindset Never Unlearned
One of the clearest signs that someone never fully unlearned Christianity is their need for rigid, textual authority. A true Pagan embraces ambiguity, personal revelation, and the dynamic nature of myth, whereas a lore-thumper demands an “official” correct way to do things—just as Christians demand scriptural justification for every aspect of their lives.
The Norse people themselves were not dogmatic about their beliefs. Their myths were diverse, their practices localized, and their understanding of the gods was shaped by experience, tradition, and necessity. The idea of a “one true way” to worship the gods would have been alien to them.
Yet, the Asatru lore-thumper recreates the exact same patterns as Christian fundamentalists:
- They treat the Eddas like the Bible
- They reject spiritual experiences in favor of “correct doctrine”
- They attack others for not following their version of the faith
- They seek control over others’ beliefs rather than focusing on their own spirituality
At their core, these individuals are not practicing Norse Paganism—they are practicing a monotheistic religion disguised as polytheism, where “lore” functions as their scripture and they act as its self-appointed priests.
Conclusion: The True Pagan Path
A real polytheist understands that faith is lived, not dictated. The gods are experienced, not merely studied. The lore-thumper is a spiritually dead husk, cut off from the divine by their own arrogance, shackled to the same authoritarian dogma they once followed under Christianity.
True Norse Paganism is free, organic, experiential, and evolving—it is not a list of “rules” written down centuries ago by Christian monks. Anyone who claims otherwise is merely a Christian fundamentalist in Pagan cosplay.
The Prevalence of Christian-tru in Heathenism
The Prevalence of Christian-tru in Heathenism
Many people who take more of a rigid and highly dogmatic approach to Asatru and Heathenism, are not actually practicing Asatru at all, they are practicing Christian-tru; the dogmatic dualistic mindset (I am right, you are wrong thinking) of Christianity, with Norse Heathen trappings thrown on top of it. Sadly these Christian-tru types are the louder more preachy sorts (just as is typical of Christians) and thus their ideas tend to get more distributed into the Heathen/Asatru community because of this. To truly practice Heathenism, we need to get back to the mindset of the ancient Heathens. Just simply imitating the ritual practices of the ancient Heathens, hardly makes us Heathen. It is the thinking patterns of a group of people that is the heart of who they are.
The outer practices of all Heathens were never universal, since Heathens were a variety of people scattered around a large area, mostly living in small groups isolated from one another, without the modern level of global communications, so most traditions and practices would have been more local based. Every clan probably had their own family traditions that had been passed down for generations. People did not use books to learn things, all knowledge was passed down orally. It is the Christians that brought book based culture to Europe, and book based culture introduces standardization of ways of thinking.
The whole only one God is valid concept creates a whole different way of thinking, since if only one God is valid then only one way to be is valid, according to this monotheistic approach to spirituality. The whole concept of “religion” only exists within monotheistic religions. It was the spread of the monotheistic religions that created the idea of religions.
Pagan/Heathen religions are polytheistic, thus many Gods/Goddesses, which translates to there being many valid approaches to things in terms of thinking.
This is why the monotheistic religions were able to convert most polytheistic religions, since Pagans/Heathens didn’t see the God of the monotheistic religion as being the one only God, just another God. Thus at first when converting Pagans/Heathens the monotheistic preacher would use this difference to get people to start to worship their God and over time work on making them understand the monotheistic way of thinking. This did not happen overnight. For a long period of time people would just continue to be polytheistic but add the new God from the monotheistic faith into the list of deities they were worshiping.
Most people who take more of a Christian-tru approach to being Asatru or Heathen, came directly from a monotheistic Christian background, and didn’t yet learn to actually think like a polytheist. It can take time for a person to learn a totally different way of thinking. The other side of this is people that came to Asatru or Heathenism from the background of having first been either Wiccan or Neo-Pagan. They tend to have an easier time understanding polytheistic thinking. But often times the Christian-tru person is jealous of people who were Wiccan or Neo-Pagan before coming to Asatru or Heathenism, thus why the common insult of calling people Wicca-tru within the community. I can almost guarantee the vast majority of those acting this way are Christian-tru, people who came from a monotheistic Christian background, and didn’t learn to stop thinking like a judgemental dogmatic monotheistic Christian yet.
To better understand the difference between the Heathen and Christian mindset in regards to the idea of spirituality and “religion” here is a good video that explains more about this.:
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