The Buddhist concept of self is not compatible with the Western concept of ego. The word “ego” existed in ancient Latin, and simply meant “I.” The concept of ego we all know today was invented by Sigmund Freud. There was no equivalent concept in Buddhism until the 1900s when Western Buddhists watered down the original teachings to make them more compatible with Western tastes.

The Buddhist concept of “no self” is very literal and not at all the modern invention of ego death or even ego balancing. That’s psychoanalysis. You can’t argue that Buddhism is only using “no self” to refer to a mortal self. That’s because the teaching of samsara says the death of a mortal self is irrelevant to suffering. The only way to end suffering is to end samsara, and the only way to achieve that is annihilation (negation) of the eternal self. You can argue that diminishing our thoughts, feelings, and actions (the eightfold path) will reduce the incarnated self, which is the immediate goal of Buddhism; the long-term goal, again, being negation of any temporal self so that the eternal self is annihilated.