The past is not merely past — it is the accumulated record of what has been attempted, what has failed, what has endured, and what the consequences of various choices have been. Studying it with this orientation transforms history from a chronicle into a resource for present discernment. The Sutras' own transmission across twenty-five centuries is an argument for the temporal axis: some understanding is so precisely calibrated to the actual structure of citta that it outlasts the cultural conditions in which it was first articulated.
Patan