All these years, like others, I too had a perception of Yamraja as a negative personality whose name has been used for centuries to frighten people. I started analyzing him only recently, after I started searching why Yamraja has a Bhainsa (male buffalo) as his sawari (vehicle). Yamraja is also known as Dharma Raja, which means the one who is enriched with the power of justice. The mythological names were so written that they fitted the personality of the person. Dushasan means the one who is Dusht in Shasan, Yudhishthir means one who is sthir in the battle field. We, as human beings, have negative and positive qualities. Negative qualities are depicted with the need to control and are depicted as the vehicles of GOD. Yamraja within us means our inner power to do justice. As per mythology, the role of Yamraja is to decide and send us into hell or heaven by calculating the positive and negative karmas. If the balance is positive, the person goes to heaven and if the balance is negative, the person goes to hell. As per modern science, hell and heaven are within this planet earth. Your Yamraja quality of consciousness is all the time subtracting bad karmas from good karmas. If the sum total result is negative, you end up with a disease or suffering. Suffering can be equated to hell and a period of no suffering and no illness can be equated to heaven. Instead of fearing Yamraja, we should actually make him our personal friend and everyday in the evening, he (our consciousness) should be asked to give us a score of our Karmas, whether positive or negative. If negative, the next day we should do more positive karmas to negate the bad karma. To become a good human being we need to control our negative animal like tendencies. Bhainsa (male buffalo) is known for his nature of destroying anything which comes in his way. Your power of justice can only be successful if you learn to control this quality of yours. Your judgments should always be neutral and non vindictive; always keep anger under control. In fact, the Yamraja quality in us can be equated to the qualities, which a judge should have in Court; be it District, High or Supreme Court. The better term, therefore, is Dharma Raja as no judge would like to be called as Yamraja.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this write up are my own).