Michael Lafargue writes in The Tao of the Tao Te Ching

It seems important to add to the mix here one message coming from another culture besides our own, namely the Chinese word or concept, of the “Tao” which has become part of our own Western philosophical and religious lexicon (though in a distinctive way not entirely akin to the way it is used and understood in the Chinese context). Although the basic generic, normative meaning of the word Tao is simply “road” or “way”, an additional meaning—and the one that I play with today—is “the spirit or quality of mind one is cultivating.