Dear Gaurahari dasa (by PADA) 01/ 17/ 12

Dear Gaurahari dasa, Generally we are pretty merciful, for example we support ISKCON temples in so many examples, giving them mercy. Another example, I am telling people to dress deities and do so much service to ISKCON temples, and they are doing that service. When people ask me, I tell them to stay and serve. Without our people, there would not be a Rathayatra here at all. And I am trying to encourage the Sunnyvale devotees to help with the Berkeley Ratha festival next year etc. I myself helped paint the deities here. We also have people distributing books, doing harinama and so many other things, for the ISKCON temples. Our mercy is pretty clear. The problem is that we are not generally receiving the same mercy. If you can SHOW some of their people by PRACTICAL EXAMPLES from their side to start helping our program, and quit taking our people off the harinama parties etc and telling them never to come back, as is being done STILL TODAY etc., that would be wonderful. (They just kicked some of our people off a harinama party). Incidentally, they have been taking our devotees out of temples, stopping them from dressing the deity, taking them off of harinama and so on, for the past 35 years. Maybe you are right, the lions will quit attacking the lambs at some point, but its not happening to much now. What needs to be done is to show some practical examples of their mercy will START coming to our side, an exchange. Right now they have spent $15,000,000, thats 15 milllion, suing us, so this does not seem like they are serious. Mercy is a two way street. So if you can show us some practical examples of how this exchange will occur, that will be useful. As for us coming to love of God, since we have not been allowed to do service there, we are doing service independent. That is what Srila Prabhupada did, he said if they will not allow us to serve there in the official institution, well ok, do independent. So we are making an independent network. The fact that they are spending 15 millions dollars to remove more of us out has been our best advertising program ever. They have simply encouraged hundreds if not thousands of more people to become more involved with our side and less on their side, so -- the money they spent on that lawsuit has given us hundreds of new contacts and fans, so in one sense, their attacking us has given us  hundreds if not thousands of new customers we otherwise never would have attained. So from our point of view its a win win situation. However I agree with you that a truce would be better, so if you can get some truce organized, we'd like that, but we have to see practically that it is sincere and then it will have effect. ys pd