Why does sensory experience belong in the past?

Answer 1

All experience, including sensory, moves instantly from present to past, as time moves forward inexorably. The result is an urge to re-experience these lost pleasurable sensations. Human beings who cannot understand and accept the flickering nature of pleasures may strive inappropriately to regain them, through crime or addiction. Or, frustrated, they may harm others or themselves. This intrinsic impermanent nature of the material world is said to be absent in the transcendent, spiritual (nonmaterial) world. Religious and/or philosophical understandings often help people to accept the limitations inherent in this life.

Answer 2

Sensory experience belongs in the past because our brains receive and process sensory information after it has already occurred. The time it takes for our brains to interpret and make sense of the inputs from our senses means that by the time we become aware of a sensory experience, it has already happened in the past.