Diferents of present participle and past participle

 past participle

 English participles, like infinitives, have no tense.


What I meant to say was that "containing" works because, in the sample sentence, we don't need to distinguish "that contains" "that contained" (simple past tense), and "that was containing" (past tense, progressive or continuous aspect), which all reduce to the same participle, "containing".


The other participle "contained" does not fit the context, but might be used in a passive (voice) sense, as a reduced form of "that is contained", "that gets contained", "that has been contained", "that was contained", etc. but a past participle cannot.


Another example (note that no particular tense is implied by either participle)

"Past" participle: a grown man (a man that is, has, was, or had already grown up).