I found it to be extremely woo until I sat down for many weeks with an advaita Vedanta tutor. Revisiting the Tao after spending some time with the crest jewel of discrimination and some other texts convinced me it could be mediated on. What it holds I could not understand before some guidance, but I have to accept others may be more ready to discover the truth hidden in there. To me still the Tao merits meditation though my approach is taking short passages at a time (perhaps like Buddhists mediating on Koans? I don't know the practice so perhaps I'm way off base here)
Totally agree. Speaking from the western perspective, it's short and poetic, and it introduces concepts that people aren't familiar with in a brief and accessible way. I don't think anyone in the west is becoming a Taoist in any meaningful sense because of it.