Well, maybe I'll mention a word in Pali, Appamada, and explain what it means. Because thoughtfulness, we can relate it to being mindful, to being aware, and definitely we can't develop any Paramis unless we are aware, unless we are being more mindful of our actions, our speech and our thoughts. It may help for all of you to know about this word Appamada. Supposedly when the Buddha was dying, Appamada was more or less his final instructions which he gave in his last sentence, the Pali sentence has this word Appamada in it. And although it gets translated in a few different ways, we favor a translation that, a very important Thai teacher here in Thailand uses, and that is the word, "Heedfulness."
Heedfulness is not a common English word, and yet, to be heedful is something English people understand. Heedfulness includes being careful, includes being very mindful, includes being thoughtful. There is an interesting little Sutta somewhere in the Scriptures where the Buddha actually explains that all wholesome qualities, all good beneficial qualities are actually included inside the word Appamada. Appamada, heedfulness, actually includes all the qualities we are trying to develop. So when we think of the word thoughtfulness, which is a term we don't specifically use, it is to be thoughtful, to be mindful, to be aware. We can look at these two words as being very similar, because when we look at the word Appamada, it includes everything similar. We're going to be careful, we're going to be mindful.
Although some people may not see this, Appamada automatically includes having compassion. Because why do we want to be thoughtful, why do we want to be heedful, why do we want to be careful? We want to be careful so we don't cause Dukkha and difficulties for ourselves and others. So when we think of heedfulness, to a certain extent, it's a bigger word than carefulness. In English, it's really implying much more. To be heedful means we're going to think about things very clearly. To be careful implies the same thing, but it's used much lighter, I think. So to be heedful means we're going to look much more closely at a situation. Now when we're thoughtful, when we're heedful, that includes taking in the understanding of actions and results of actions, like I mentioned yesterday about Sati-Sampajanno. To be heedful, to be very thoughtful, we're going to consider what we are doing now, and we are going to consider the results of it. So when we think, as this question states "It seems that most, maybe all, Paramis are developed when one is being thoughtful," if we consider the word Appamada, then this is definitely true. When we're more careful, we're more heedful, we're more thoughtful, all the Paramis will be helped in their development.