What's leisure?  As most historians know, the modern idea of leisure surfaced during the Industrial Revolution in nineteenth century Europe.  Once Europeans smoothed out most of the rough and painful edges of the urbanization and capitalism then spreading through their land, they realized that, to their suprise, they had time to do things besides work.  Now that many of them worked not fourteen but "only" eight or nine hours per day, and that only five or six days out of the week, they had the means, and the liberty to pursue activities directly pleasing to them.  Out of this, the modern notion of leisure was born.
     As people who have studied non-Western cultures at length note, however, the West had merely come to realize what these cultures had noticed all along.  Ironically, it is the least industrialized cultures whose people have the most leisure time.  Although the people of the West (and the developing nations as well) have vastly more material means than their non-Western brethren, they in fact have less time in which to enjoy them. Such contrast makes one wonder whether humanity has really progressed at all.
     Many centuries ago, Aristotle pointed out that, ideally, leisure is not so much an activity as it is a state of mind.  As the Greek philosopher saw it, in leisure, people take time to reflect and meditate upon the meaning of life.  Although they may engage in activities, they view these activities as ancillary to the larger goal of deepening one's understanding of what life is.  The ultimate pursuit is a metaphysical one:  the grappling with the point of existence.
     So do non-Westerners "do" leisure better than Westerners?  Subjectively, it is difficult to say.  Objectively, however, perhaps they do.  We do anything best when we do it as a way to achieve more than mere happiness.  We do best when we frame anything we do with a vision of gaining richer insight into what really matters.
     Sometimes money and material abundance mask the enduring metaphysical abundance from which they both ultimately come.