Latest posts
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The Race Around the World That Ganesha Won Without Taking a Single Step
Shiva and Parvati, wanting to settle a friendly but real competition between their two sons, announced a contest with a prize both boys wanted badly: a single, extraordinary golden mango, said to grant wisdom and immortality to whoever ate it, awarded to whichever son could complete a circuit of the entire world first. A race…
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Kalki: The Avatar Still Waiting to Arrive
Unlike Vishnu’s nine previous incarnations – Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, and the Buddha – all of which the tradition treats as events that have already occurred, Kalki occupies a distinctly different narrative position: an avatar prophesied but not yet arrived, described by the Puranas in considerable detail as the final incarnation…
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Why the Buddha Appears in Vishnu’s Own List of Incarnations
Among the more surprising entries in several traditional lists of Vishnu’s ten principal avatars, the Dashavatara, is the Buddha – a historical teacher whose own tradition explicitly rejects Vedic ritual authority and the concept of a personal creator god, making his inclusion in a distinctly Vaishnava framework of divine incarnations one of the more theologically…
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Kurma: The Tortoise Who Held Up the Entire Churning of the Ocean
Before the churning of the ocean of milk could even begin, gods and demons faced a basic engineering problem: Mount Mandara, chosen as the churning rod because of its size and stability, had no firm base to rest against as it rotated in the ocean’s depths, and risked simply sinking through the soft ocean floor…
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Mohini: The Form Vishnu Took When Only Deception Could Save the Gods
The churning of the ocean of milk had been a joint effort out of necessity rather than trust – gods and demons, unable individually to churn the ocean deep enough to produce its treasures, had formed a temporary and deeply uneasy alliance using Mount Mandara as the churning rod and the serpent Vasuki as the…
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Rahu and Ketu: The One Demon Who Got Half-Immortal by Cheating
When the churning of the ocean of milk finally produced Amrita, the nectar of immortality, Vishnu took the form of Mohini, a woman of overwhelming beauty, specifically to distribute the nectar among the gods while keeping it from the demons who had helped churn the ocean but were never meant to share equally in its…
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The Parijata Tree: The Fight Between Two Queens That Krishna Had to Settle Twice
The Parijata is a celestial flowering tree, produced during the churning of the ocean of milk, whose blossoms carry a fragrance and beauty unmatched by anything growing on earth, and whose location – firmly planted in Indra’s heavenly garden – made it a possession no mortal, however powerful, was expected to simply walk away with.…
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The Night Krishna Finally Faced the Uncle Who Tried to Kill Him as a Baby
Kamsa, the tyrannical king of Mathura, had imprisoned his own father to seize the throne and lived under the shadow of a prophecy declaring that the eighth child born to his sister Devaki and her husband Vasudeva would be the one to kill him. Rather than accept this fate, Kamsa imprisoned the couple and systematically…
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Kaliya: The Poisonous Serpent Krishna Danced Into Submission
A stretch of the Yamuna river near Vrindavan had become so thoroughly poisoned by the venom of Kaliya, a multi-hooded serpent who had made his home in its depths after fleeing a conflict with Garuda, that the water itself was lethal – killing birds that flew too close, poisoning the air around its banks, and…
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Govardhan: The Hill Krishna Lifted to Humble a God
Every year, the cowherd community of Vrindavan prepared elaborate offerings and celebrations for Indra, king of the gods and controller of rain, in gratitude for the seasonal monsoons that sustained their cattle and crops. The young Krishna, still a boy living among the cowherds, questioned the practice one year, asking his father Nanda and the…