Yama is inherited from the Vedic world and put to a new use. He judges, there are hells with vivid and specific torments, and the wheel of becoming is often shown clenched in his jaws — and yet the doctrine underneath insists there is no judge in the moral sense, only karma ripening according to cause. Both things are held at once, and the paintings are on the monastery wall for a reason: Buddhist teachers have generally been pragmatic about fear as a first motivator for people who are not yet moved by anything subtler. The hells, unlike their Abrahamic counterparts, are temporary. Everyone gets out.