Our dear Lord Mahavishnu has got ten famous avataras.

You know what an avatara is?

The Lord’s permanent place of living is called Vaikuntha.

It is a beautiful world of his own where he lives with Lakshmi Devi, Bhumi Devi, Nila Devi, Tulasi Devi and many many of his best devotees.

His best devotees go to Vaikuntha and live with him forever.

Whenever his devotees on earth are in trouble, the Lord takes a particular form and descends upon earth.

He solves their problem and goes back to Vaikuntha.

This is called avatara.

There is a purpose behind every avatara.

Main avataras are ten, one of which is yet to happen.

It will happen at the end of Kaliyuga called Kalki avatara.

Some scriptures consider his avataras as twenty-four, some thirty-eight, some thirty-nine.

They are all his important avataras.

But his actual avataras are countless.

Whenever any of his devotees is in trouble, even an individual, he comes down to help.

If any of his devotees calls out to him for help, he will come down to help.

In some form or the other, as a friend, as a neighbour, as someone.

But we may not know this; what form he takes we may not know.

But he comes for sure.

That also is his avatara because he is coming down from Vaikuntha.

One among his main ten avataras called Dashavatara is Kurmavatara.

Kurma means tortoise.

When the universe came into existence, there were both good and bad in it.

You know this.

There are so many good, nice people around you and some not so good people also.

The good ones are called Devas.

They are always honest, helpful, brilliant.

The bad ones are Asuras: greedy, violent, arrogant.

Unfortunately, the Asuras were also powerful.

They kept on attacking the Devas.

Swarga is where Devas live.

Sometimes, the Ausras even ousted Devas from swarga after attacking them.

On one such occasion when Asuras had conquered Swarga, all the Devas went to Sri Hari Mahavishnu seeking his help.

Bhagavan said: this can not go on for long like this.

You have to permanently become more powerful than the Asuras so that they can never touch you.

But for this, you have to become immortal.

To become immortal, you have to drink amrita.

You know what is amrita?

There is a milky ocean.

Like the ocean that we see which is made up of water, this milky ocean is made up of milk.

It is in this ocean that the Lord sleeps on top of a bed made up of the huge thousand headed serpent called Adishesha.

Bhagavan said: put all the medicinal herbs of the world into the milky ocean and churn it like how you churn curd to take out butter.

If you go on churning, finally amrita will come out of it because of the goodness of milk and all the medicinal properties of the herbs put into it.

But it is a huge task.

You Devas won’t be able to do it alone.

So now, go for a compromise with the Asuras and tell them that you both will jointly churn milky ocean and get amrita out of it.

Devas asked: then won’t the Asuras also become immortal and powerful?

The Lord said: don’t worry I will take care of it.

So, the Devas and Asuras agreed to churn the milky ocean jointly.

But how will you churn an ocean?

It is not like churning a pot of curd.

They used a huge mountain called Mandara as the churning stick and the king of serpents Vasuki as the rope.

After tying Vasuki around Mandara mountain the Asuras held the head side of Vasuki, Devas held the tail side of Vasuki and started pulling back and forth.

But the mountain was very heavy.

After some time it started sinking into the ocean.

When he saw this, Bhagavan Sri Hari Mahavishnu assumed the form of a huge tortoise and held the mountain up on his back till the churning was successfully completed.

This is called the Kurmavatara which Sri Hari took to help Devas get amrita and become immortal.

The world will be good only if Devas are powerful and they rule the world.

That’s why Bhagavan helped Devas.