There are already two translations of this book. Only the first of them has been printed, in serial form, in the “World Fellowship of Buddhists journal”, but this translation is very incomplete and rather inaccurate. Whereas the second translation which was done by Venerable Suchard (Abhijato Bhikkhu) was complete and quite accurate. At first I thought of using this translation, correcting it and improving the English (which was already quite good). But then, I had to consider the style of English, the correct meaning of many of the technical terms and the way to bring out some of the underlying subtleties of the text. In the end I decided that it was easier to start over again and do it all in my own words. But in all of this, I must acknowledge the debt I owe to the translation that was done by Venerable Suchard.