Sensual Desire and Guarding the Sense Doors Sensual desire is a hindrance and thus it should be avoided and preferably eliminated (though I'm highly skeptical whether something in the brain can really be "eliminated" regarding emotions - I doubt it.)

But we humans have all day long sensual desires. Let it be for food, bodily comfort, music (sound), art (sight), sex, etc.
So should we remove all of them (ideally)?

Also what is meant by sense restraint? I cannot really fathom it. I doubt that it means to go out with closed eyes and ears, haha. 

Does it simply mean to avoid certain triggers? (which would answer the first question simultaneously)

Thanks in advance
Sensual desire is like feeling thirst for something (Pali tanha, Sanskrit trishna).

If you feel cold and decide to put some clothes on, normally it has nothing to do with sensual desire. It's a normal act of regulating something.

If you develop thirst to possess some special clothes, that is developing sensual desire. When you see those clothes, your hands might start to tremble, your breathing might become heavy - because of that thirst.

It shows that sensual desire is developed by our own mental activity - with the attitude of unhealthy longing for something - and it generates vexations.

In that sense we can speak about guarding the sense doors:


observing what we perceive,
observing to stay natural, not developing unwholesome desires,
observing to dissolve unwholesome desires if they are already developed.


So that discipline relates not to hiding from original stimuli, but to how we react to them. For example, monks don't avoid seeing women, but they avoid looking at them with sexual passion. That's how they guard the sense doors: not allowing the thieves of vexations to steal our natural mind.