(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 25 December 2013, Mayapur, India, Srimad Bhagavatam 5.9.3)
How can we understand what is integrity? For example, different people have different levels of behaviour. A brahmana and a candala cannot be treated in the same way. If some local resident of Vrndavan just pushes you aside in the temple and you cannot just fold your hands and say, “Brajbasi!” But Jada Bharata could. If anyone would have pushed him, he would have just been pushed. But it is not that we always have to let ourselves be pushed.
We have different natures, some people are cool and some people are hot! When hot people always have to be cool, they explode; Krsna understands that! So, Krsna knows that there are hot people and sometimes they have to let a little fire from the mouth but that can be dangerous because when you too much fire out of your mouth then you yourself can become burnt by vaisnava apradha.
So we must be careful, we must try to tolerate, trnad api sunicena taror api sahisnuna, (Sikastakam verse 3). To be more humble than a blade of grass and more tolerant than a tree. At the end of the verse, it says to be respectful to all living beings, “My dear ant, excuse me for having such big feet. I am very sorry for having killed your grandmother so please forgive me.” That was the mood of Jada Bharata, he even cared about the ants…
So integrity goes very deep, it goes very far and the change of heart that we have to go through, also goes very far.