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which are unnecessarily caught up with Thai culture have been minimized or omitted. The content of this book is more advanced than the for- going titles in the series 'Buddhism in Plain English'. This book had thus been placed as number '3' in the series be- cause the content of the book is reasonably difficult, deal- ing almost entirely with higher spiritual training. It goes much further than, for example, Blueprint for a Global Being or Buddhist Economics which are grounded on a basis of everyday life and virtues. In fact, the whole subject of re- nunciation of the mundane, which is the point of depar- ture for this book, may seem alien to householders who might feel perfectly contented with their lot in life. There may be a tendency to see the Buddha's renunciation of the world as at best irrelevant to themselves or extreme, or at worst irresponsible. For this reason, it is necessary to lay a foundation of understanding for the reader concerning three major issues before embarking upon the main body of this book. Firstly, it is important to understand that the vast major- ity of people live in a world of delusion. Even without touch- ing a drop of alcohol, they tend to be drunk with the ap- parent perpetuity of life, labouring under the misappre- hensions that: 1. life will be long; 2. they will be forever free of illness; 3. their youth will be eternal. When Prince Siddhattha journeyed outside the palace in his youth, witnessing the three so-called ‘angelic emissar- ies’ [devaḍūta], an old man, a sick man and a corpse, he did not see these things as others before him had. Most