You do not depart from the way even for an instant;
what you depart from is not the way.

Nature? God? Dao has become just another English word. I can look it up in M-W, where tao is defined as “the art of doing something in harmony with its essential nature” and where it etymology is given as “Chinese dào, literally, way”.

Herbert Fingarette described alcoholism as a way of life. Some historians (…) write or talk of lifeways. A dao may be a way of life. But that diminishes the point.