Boyd Varty, the South African writer and conservationist, talks about lions and rest in the the latest TED Radio Hour podcast (starts around 26 minutes in):

I grew up spending hours and hours and hours out in nature observing animals. And there is a pace to the natural world, and a genius to the natural world, that arises out of that state of being.

You watch lions lie for 18 hours in deep rest. Just watching them you learn about the power of rest. And then, just as the temperate starts to shift, they feel the change on their body, and out of that deep rest comes an intensity of movement. And so they’re in that rhythm, and they hunt with a ferocity and a focus, and they’re extremely efficient.

But they’re never resting thinking about being efficient, or being really efficient wishing they were resting. They’re always where they are. And that to me is the essence of wisdom really: to be where you are, and to allow action to arise out of that being. That’s the natural world.

Source: “Becoming Wise,” TED Radio Hour (10 June 2016).