Why Do Non-Buddhists Attain Fruits, Even the Fourth Fruit, Upon First Hearing the Buddha's Teaching?

The non-Buddhist practitioners had all cultivated the four dhyānas and eight meditative concentrations, subduing and severing afflictive delusions to varying degrees; all that was lacking was the contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) wisdom regarding the truth of the Four Noble Truths, and the conditions for seeing the Path would be complete — as the saying goes, everything is ready except the east wind. This east wind refers to the causes and conditions for seeing the Path. Once those causes and conditions appeared, they could immediately see the Path, and that cause and condition for seeing the Path was the Buddha coming to proclaim the truth of the Four Noble Truths. When the conditions for the first fruit are complete, one attains the first fruit; when the conditions for the second fruit are complete, one attains the second fruit; when the conditions for the third fruit are complete, one attains the third fruit; when the conditions for the fourth fruit are complete, one attains the fourth fruit. Therefore, when each person listened to the Buddha's teaching of the Dharma, the fruit they realized differed, and the difference lay in the differing conditions for seeing the Path. 

Seeing the Path is like eating the seventh pancake. The non-Buddhist practitioners had already eaten six pancakes and were only seventy to eighty percent full, not yet completely satiated. When they heard the Buddha expound the truth of the Four Noble Truths, they ate the seventh pancake and were instantly full. The first six pancakes were the foundation, laying a base in the stomach; adding one more pancake filled the stomach completely.

Do not merely look at others' final results; look at the arduous process of their cultivation and how much sweat they diligently shed. If they had not paid an enormous price, had not diligently cultivated the four dhyānas and eight meditative concentrations, they would not have the foundation of those six pancakes — even if given six more pancakes, they probably still could not eat their fill and see the Path. Some people say that in the exchanges of questions and answers between the Buddha and his disciples, the disciples saw the Path in an instant — a matter of just a few minutes, very easy, without such hardship and trouble. But do you know that the merit of seeing the Path within those few minutes was accumulated from the countless roots of goodness and merit of the Buddha's disciples? How long did each of them take to eat those six pancakes? How arduous was it? How great a price did they pay in past lives and this life?

Many people envy athletes who win a gold medal in a single competition — international gold medals, national gold medals — thinking how lucky they are, completely failing to see their years of accumulated striving, how much sweat and tears they shed, how much rest time they gave up, how much physical cost they paid, even the cost to their lives and health, how much grievance they endured, before seizing the gold medal in one stroke at the competition. Where in the world or beyond the world is anything so easy? Is realizing the fruit as easy as eating cabbage? Through countless kalpas of birth-and-death transmigration, evil karma has piled up like mountains and entangled them — how could a few minutes or a few hours break through the karmic obstructions of birth and death accumulated over countless kalpas, extinguishing the karma of the three evil destinies? How is that possible? One would not even dream of such good fortune. Otherwise, why would there be boundless sentient beings in birth and death rather than boundless Buddhas?