The Purple-Bud Tree at the Edge of the Clearing

In a small mountain hermitage, an old teacher sends each of his four students, one in every season, to sit before the same redbud tree. When they gather at last by the hearth and find that no two of their trees are alike, they discover, without argument and without hurry, that a single reality wears four faces, and that listening to one another is how the whole tree comes slowly into view.