Three questions about sensual desire If music is a sensual desire , what's wrong with that?

Sensual desire is described as the first of the five hindrances. What I am a little perplexed by is the stance of Buddhism on the positive senses.

For instance, if I desire to listen to a song, is the problem the desire, or the 'emotions and feelings' the song itself brings up?

Apart from sensual 'desire', what about just sensual 'enjoyment'?

If I just happen to walk by an area in which music is playing, and I find myself tapping my feet, or feeling really good; is this seen as a state we must abandon? I mean, if we never desired the music in the first place and it just happens to play around us, what is the harm in seeing the beauty in it? If someone offers us food, are we required to not enjoy our sense pleasures of it?

Isn't even metta meditation also a sensual desire?

Also, metta-meditation frequently uses people as objects of good-will and loving-kindness -- however, this is attaching sense pleasures to mental objects, which I thought are to be abandoned?

How does metta-meditation even make sense in the context of Buddhism when the meditation cultivates 'positive' states from mental objects?
Prevention is better than cure. It is easiest to tackle the mental pollution of unwholesome acts before it has happened - i.e. at the stage that desire is born.

For the same reason, help groups like Alchoholics Anonymous say "Say no to the first drink" - call a sponsor or friend and get over the urge. Suicide hotlines work the same way - they would like us to call at the very first thought of self harm, and not when we are standing on the ledge.

Likewise, it is more effective to walk away or keep silent when we feel angry, than calm down after a long rant. 

Preventing unwholesome desires from arising, or tackling them as soon as they have arisen with right contemplation is better than recovering from the addiction.

Samsara is a greater addiction than any drug or alcohol.


  If I just happen to walk by an area in which music is playing, and I
  find myself tapping my feet, or feeling really good; is this seen as a
  state we must abandon?


This is a fundamental question about all entertainment - why must entertainment be eschewed? 

First, the nature of boredom is that it arises out of a mind that isn't at ease with itself. The nature of thought at the moment a bored mind arises is to gravitate towards the outside world - towards sense pleasures.

Distracted thought gets reinforced with every application of distraction, so much so, we live in a world where hardly anyone reads books, and more and more people even find Twitter too much text - they want videos or GIF images instead. If we make a habit of mindfulness, then the opposite is true, at every opportunity the mind will seek mindfulness. 

Second, the nature of boredom is that it gets excited by violence rather than peace - it is an existential threat mechanism that is woken up and makes us come alive. Thus entertainment is the enemy of equanimity.

Thirdly, entertainment reinforces duality, of the entertainer and the entertained. It makes us lapse into being controlled by external forces, rather than taking control of our mind. 

It is thus a quality of mind to be safe guarded against.


  Also, metta-meditation frequently uses people as objects of good-will
  and loving-kindness -- however, this is attaching sense pleasures to
  mental objects, which I thought are to be abandoned?


All mind states come with a stinger of unwholesomeness, except four mind states. Which four?

The four Bramhaviharas or Bramha abodes - namely, karuna (compassion), maithri (loving kindness), mudita (sympathetic joy at the well being of others, or the opposite of schadenfreude) and upeksha (equanimity).

The mind needs to be parked somewhere, and rather than park it in a state where it can be tempted by a more exciting desire, if we park it in these four areas the mind will remain at peace, occupied and not easily distracted.