> Attributing boredom (or rather distraction) to an external malevolent force helps better combat it. You could think of the entire concept of "spirits", eithe

> Attributing boredom (or rather distraction) to an external malevolent force helps better combat it. You could think of the entire concept of "spirits", either benevolent (angels) or malevolent (demons) as an extension of this idea. Mental processes could be thought of as chatter that takes place in a network of neurons - if you have any notion about modern biology. But what do you do if you don't have that information? You create metaphors for these things and simply ignore the root cause explanation because it's beyond the boundaries of your knowledge anyway. You represent them as "beings" inhabiting a special "spiritual world" - which is not that far off the mark given the relative independence (to some extent) of many of our mental processes. Beyond the explanatory power, this also serves a more practical goal. When undesirable mental processes are thought of as being "separate" entities, it does become a bit easier to fight them. Just don't fall into the error of taking these images at face value (literal beings inhabiting a literal other world). All in all, as long as you keep in mind that these are metaphors for stuff that happens in your consciousness, a good chunk of the mythology that these monks subscribed to actually does make sense.