But in the end I think for most people 'understanding' the concept of monads is just something that is not to be had within a couple of hours. It takes a little bit of patience thinking about them and using them for a while.
The core problem seems to be that we just don't (yet) have good words for this particular space of abstractions. Many programmers have thought about or solved the same problem monads address, but they haven't mentally labelled the concept, and we certainly have agreed as an industry on these labels. So we're all struggling to try to talk about some things we don't have terms for.
very 'operational', zero magic, good to get your hands dirty.
Dans' tutorial you linked is one of my favorite too.