However, the common usage of ego, both within Buddhist teachings and in the world at large, makes ego sound like an entity that has a shape and a size, and that can be extracted like a tooth. It doesn't work that way. Ego is not an object; it's more like a process that follows through on the proclivity for grasping, and for holding on to fixed ideas and identities.

— Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

from In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying